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THE LIFE AND LETTERS 



OF 



ROSCOE CONKLING, 



ORATOR, STATESMAN, ADVOCATE. 



BY 



ALFRED R. CONKLING, PH. B., LL. B. 




NEW YORK: 
CHARLES L. WEBSTER & COMPANY. 






Copyrighted, 1889, 

By ALFRED R. CONKLING. 

(^All right 1 1 reserved. ) 



PRINTED BY 

G. F. CLASS, 

NEW YORK. 



This Volume is respectfully dedicated to the 
People of New York, who conferred upon 

ROSCOE CONKLING 

the unusual honor of three successive elections to the 
Senate of the United States, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

CHAPTER I. 

1635-1829. PAGE 

Genealogy 1-8 

CHAPTER n. 

I 829-1 850. 

The Boyhood of Roscoe Conkling 9-18 

CHAPTER HI. 

1850-1853. 

The Young Lawyer 19-41 

CHAPTER IV. 

1853-1853. 

Legal Practice and Local Politics 42-60 

CHAPTER V. 

1858-1859. 

Mr. Conkling as Mayor 61-73 

CHAPTER VI. 
August, 1S58 — April, 1S59. 
He is Elected to Congress — Unpublished Correspondence be- 
tween Mr. Conkling and Thomas Corwin, of Ohio 74-90 

CHAPTER Vn. 
1S59-1S61. 
His First Term in Congress — Extracts from Speeches on the 
Powers of the Supreme Court of the United States and 
in Opposition to Slavery gi-i20 

CHAPTER VIII. 
I 860-1 861. 

The Budge Murder Trial ,,.,,,.,.,,,, isi-i^q 

7 



PAGE 



^'"* CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
1861-1862. 
The Thirty-Seventh Congress— A rnni-i;,,o. t> • 

133-150 

CHAPTER X. 
1862. 

The Legal-Tender Act 

' 151-169 

CHAPTER XI. 

I 862-1 863. 
Resolutions-Speeches-He is Renon^inated and Defeated .70-188 

CHAPTER XII. 

1863-1865. 

He Resumes Law Practice-Patriotic Meetings-Addresses 
His Renomination and Election.. ^aaresses- 

189-212 

CHAPTER XIIL 

1865. 

The Haddock Court-Martial A r^^ • , . . 

v^uuri martial— A Case in wh ch Mr. Conklino- 

was Successful '-onkiing 

213-244 

CHAPTER XIV. 

1865-1866. 

The Reconstruction Period 

245-26S 

CHAPTER XV. 
1866. 
His Last Congressional Campaign. 

269-284 



PART SECOND. 

CHAPTER XVI. 
1867. 

The Young Senator 

285-307 

CHAPTER XVIL 
1868. 

A Trip to the Rocky Mountains-The Presidential Campaign 
-Financial Bills in the Senate -^mpaign 

30S-315 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

1869-1871. PAGE 

Senator Conkling and President Grant 31^337 

CHAPTER XIX. 

1871. 
The Syracuse Convention and the State Campaign 338-347 

CHAPTER XX. 

January, 1872. 

The One-term Dogma 348-359 

CHAPTER XXI. 

1852-1887. 

Oratory 360-424 

CHAPTER XXII. 
1872. 
The Administration Vindicated — Debates in the Senate — His 

Greatest Campaign Speech 425-44S 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

1873- 
His Re-efection — A Legal Argument — An Official Trip to Can- 
ada — He is offered the Chief-Justiceship, and Declines. . . . 449-464 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

1874. 
Senatorial Debates — Financial Measures — A Celebrated Case. . . 465-486 

CHAPTER XXV. 

1875. 
Senator Conkling and General Sheridan — A Famous Patent 

Suit 487-493 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
1876. 
The State Convention at Syracuse — The Cincinnati Convention 

— The Hayes-Tilden Campaign — Life in Washington 494-515 

CHAPTER XXVIL 

January-August, 1877. 

The Electoral Count — The Electoral Commission — Second Trip 

to Europe 516-535 



s/ 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

September-December, 1877. page 

The State Convention at Rochester — President Hayes and the 

New York Custom House 536-562 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
1878. 
Eulogy on Senator Oliver P. Morton — Mr. Conkling Opposes 

the Silver Bill — A Notable Chemical Patent Suit 563-573 

CHAPTER XXX. 
January, 1S79 — June, iSSo. 
An Unusual Honor — The First Republican to be Elected Thrice 
to the Senate — Saluted by Negroes — The Utica Convention 
of February, 1880 574-587 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

18S0. 

The Chicago Convention 588-609 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

1S80. 

The Presidential Campaign 610-632 



PART THIRD. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

1880-18S1. 
His Last Year in Public Life — President Garfield — Resignation 

from the Senate — His Defeat at Albany 633-643 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

1S50-1SS8. 
Resume of His Public Career — Some Anecdotes 644-667 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

1S81-1S88. 

Mr. Conkling as a Lawyer in New York 668- 700 

CHAPTER XXXVL 

March-April, 1888. 
Conclusion ,.,,,,,,,.., ,,,,,,,.,,,,.,,,,, 701-709 



List of Fac-similes. 



Steel Portrait of Roscoe Conkling Frontispiece. 

Fac-simile of letter from Hannibal Hamlin to Alfred 

R. Conkling 401 

Fac-simile of letter from U. S. Grant to Roscoe 

Conkling 460 

Fac-simile of letter from Roscoe Conkling to U. S. 

Grant . • • 460 

Fac-simile of letter from Benj. Harrison to Rose©© 

Conkling 600 

Fac-simile of 306 Grant Medal 609 

Fac-simile of letter from Jas. A. Garfield to Roscoe 

Conkling 634 

Fac-simile of letter from Chester A. Arthur to Roscoe 

Conkling 677 

Fac-simile of letter from Allen G. Thurman to Alfred 

R. Conkling 686 



n 



PREFACE. 



The biography of Roscoe Conkling must be, to a large 
extent, the poHtical history of New York and of the 
United States from the year 1866 to the year 1884. The 
best part of his Hfe was spent in the service of the State 
and the nation. When he was elected to Congress, he 
had won reputation as an orator and an advocate. From 
that time, down to the year 1881 — excepting the term of 
the Thirty-eighth Congress — he zealously served his coun- 
try in the legislative branch of the general Government. 

Mr. Conkling was so much misunderstood and so im- 
perfectly appreciated by those who did not personally 
know him, that an exhaustive biography seems necessary. 

Soon after his death a brief memorial was published by 
order of the Legislature of the State of New York; but it 
was deemed by many of his friends inadequate to com- 
memorate the life and public services of one who, for so 
many years, was the recognized leader of the Republican 
party in his native State, and one of its champions in the 
nation. The effort has been conscientiously made to set 
right, before a busy people, one whose repugnance to 
denying newspaper rumors and calumnies, and whose 
hatred of personal explanations, have allowed the world 
to remain in ignorance of his true character. 

He is known chiefly as a public rather than as a pro- 



XIV PREFACE. 

fessional man, and yet the last seven years of his life, dur- 
ing which he was engaged in the practice of law in the 
city of New York, have given him a reputation as a jurist 
and an advocate second to none in his day. 

The opinions of many competent persons are quoted to 
show that the author does not overestimate the profes- 
sional ability and standing of Mr. Conkling. 

In fact, one who would have a just idea of modern 
American eloquence must study the speeches and argu- 
ments of Roscoe Conkling; and it is believed that public 
educators may find in the chapter on "Oratory" some 
useful material for their pupils. 

These pages will set forth his democratic spirit as well 
as his sympathy for the poor and the oppressed — espe- 
cially for the negro race. He was bitterly opposed to 
slavery, and in his first term in Congress he denounced it 
in scathing language. Many letters and incidents of his 
life will furnish ample proof of his hatred of "man's 
inhumanity to man." 

It has been the purpose of the writer to present an im- 
partial life of one of the ablest orators and statesmen that 
the republic has ever produced; Roscoe Conkling has 
therefore been called, as it were, to the witness-stand of 
public opinion, and required to testify for himself. To 
this end, free use has been made of his speeches, argu- 
ments and letters, from the Presidential campaign of 1852 
down to a day immediately preceding his fatal illness. 

His speeches are too long and too numerous to print in 
a general biography. Accordingly, extracts only from the 
celebrated speeches will be given; and in some cases it is 
preferable to omit rather than to mutilate them. 



PREFACE. XV 

It is in contemplation to publish a second volume of 
his best speeches, and it is believed that such a book will 
serve as a manual, not only of eloquence, but of recent 
American history. 

A complete list of the names of persons who have 
kindly aided the author would fill a printed page, and he 
takes this opportunity to record his grateful sense of obli- 
gation to the gentlemen who have thus contributed to the 
value of this memoir. 

He must not, however, fail to express his thanks to 
Hamilton Fish, Clarence A. Seward, Alonzo B. Cornell, 
Samuel Wilkeson, Theodore W. Dwight, Isaac H. Bailey, 
of New York; Francis Kernan, Daniel Batchelor, Theo- 
dore Pomeroy, William H. Watson, Charles M. Dennison, 
William H. Comstock, David C. Stoddard, William Blaikie, 
Addison C. Miller, William J. Bacon, of Utica; D. E. 
Wager, of Rome; Montgomery H. Throop, of Albany; 
James Parton, of Massachusetts; U. H. Painter, Samuel 
Shellabarger, George C. Gorham, of Washington; and 
James P. Boyd, of Philadelphia. 



Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling. 



Part Kirst. 



1635-1829. 

CHAPTER I. 

GENEALOGY. 

JOHN CONKLING was probably the first of 
J a family which, for the greater part of the 
nineteenth century, has been conspicuous in 
American politics, statesmanship and jurispru- 
dence. He lived in Nottinghamshire, England. 
The records of Saint Peter's parish church in this 
county show that John Conklin^ married Eliza- 
beth Allseabrook, January 24, 1625. They had 
two sons, John and Ananias. 

There is a tradition in the Long Island branch 
of the family that that branch came from Maid- 
stone, in Kent. In the summer of 1886 the author 
visited Maidstone for the purpose of verifying 

* So spelled in the original records. 



2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

this impression ; but in searching back to the year 
1560, he found no trace of the Conkling family in 
the County of Kent. 

Leaving England with his family about the 
year 1635, John Conkling landed at Boston, and 
settled at Salem, Massachusetts. He and his sons 
engaged in the manufacture of glass, and in the 
early land-grants they are described as "glasse- 
men." Their establishment is said by some histo- 
rians of American industries to have been the first 
one of the sort in this country. 

The earliest records of the Conkling family in 
the United States are to be found at Salem; and 
the following notes are taken from the original 
book of grants"^' of this place. 

\^From the Original Book of Grants of Salefn.'\ 
(i) 25th day of the fourth moneth, 1638. 
"Its ordered that Ananias Conclane and Willm Osborne shall 
have an acre apiece for house lotts. 

(2) 25th day of the 12th moneth, 1638. 

" Granted to Edmond Marshall 3 acres nere the 10 acre lott 
of Ananias Concline." [The latter was made a freeman in the 
same year. — A. R. C] 

(3) The 19th day of the 6th moneth, 1639. 

" At a genall towne meeting granted to Ananias Concklyn one 
acre nere unto his dwelling house." 

(4) A genall towne meeting the nth day of the loth moneth, 

1639- 

* It will be observed that the family name is written in five different 
ways, for the scriveners of the period had no standard for spelling. The 
reasonable presumption is that there was but one stock of Conklings in 
America. 



GENEALOG Y. 3 

" Granted one acre more to Ananias Conclyn, and 2 acres a 
piece to the other tooe viz., Laurence Southwick & Obadiah 
Holmes, each of them 2 acres to be added to theire former lotts." 
[In the Glasse-house field. — A. R. C] 

(5) The 25th day of the first moneth, 1641. 

" Granted to Ananias Conclyn a yard conteyning 20 pole." 

(6) At a genall towne meeting the 27th of the 12th moneth 
1642. 

" Its promised by the towne that the 8 that hath ben — n 

left by the court by the request of the towne to Ananias Con- 
clyne and other poore people, shall be repayed the court at the 
next Indian corne harvest." 

(7) At a meeting of the 7 men the 30th day of the 3rd moneth, 
1649. 

" Granted unto John Conclyne, Ananias Conclyne and Thomas 
Scudder to each of them 4 acres to be laid out in the medow 
aforesaid." 

The descendants of John ConkUng have become 
numerous in the State of New York and have 
spread as far west as Ilhnois. 

They had large famiUes, and the name^' is now 
quite common throughout Long Island. 

At present there are Conklings in eastern 
Massachusetts, at Philadelphia, at Cincinnati, at 
Cleveland, at Detroit, and in the cities of 
Chicago and Springfield, Illinois. The biogra- 
pher is not aware that any of these families are 
related to Roscoe Conkling, although it has been 
said that the ex-Senator had near kinsmen at 
Springfield. 

* In the counties of Queens and Suffolk it is now usually spelled Con- 
klin, without the " g." 



4 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

On or about the year 1649 John ConkUng and 
his two sons moved to Suffolk County, New 
York, Ananias settHng at Easthampton, John at 
Southold. Roscoe ConkUng is descended from 
Ananias. John ConkHng's birth and death are 
thus recorded on his tombstone : 

" Here lyeth the body of Captain John Conke- 
lyne, born in Nottinghamshire in Englande, who 
departed this hfe the sixth day of April at South- 
old on Long Island, in the sixty-fourth year of his 
age. Anno Domini, 1694." 

Ananias Conkling had two sons, Jeremiah and 
Benjamin. The former married Mary, daughter 
of Lion Gardner, of Say brook. Jeremiah Conk- 
ling, John Mulford and Thomas Ames bought, 
December i, 1670, the tract of land between Fort 
Pond and Great Pond called " the nine score acre 
purchase." Jeremiah died March 14, 171 2. His 
wife died June 15, 1726, at the age of eighty-nine. 
Jeremiah Conkling left two sons, David and 
Lewis. The latter was born in 1672. He settled 
in Amagansett about the year 1700, and about 
1739 married Mary Stratton. He died October 2, 
1 746, leaving two sons, Sineus and Isaac, and four 
daughters. His wife, Mary, died November 15, 
1752, aged seventy -six. Sineus Conkling was 
born September 6, 1718, married Clement Ayers 
about 1745, and died in 1810. He had two sons, 



GENEALOG V. 5 

Isaac and Benjamin. The latter was the grand- 
father of Roscoe Conkling. 

Benjamin was born in 1757. He became a 
farmer and taught himself Latin. He married 
Esther Hand and died m 1832. Benjamin Conk- 
ling had five children, viz : Sineus, Alfred, Na- 
thaniel, Betsey and Phoebe. The first named 
married Miss Bowditch and died in 1880. Na- 
thaniel died young. Betsey married Eleazer 
Conkling and Phoebe married a Dr. Sherman. 
Thus much for the uncles and aunts of Roscoe 
Conkling. 

Alfred Conkling was born in an ancient frame 
house at Amagansett, two and a half miles from 
Easthampton, October 12, 1789. His uncle Isaac 
had lonof lived in the same mansion. Alfred 
attended the district school, and then prepared 
himself for college by studying with the village 
parson. 

In his younger days he was fond of mischief. 
On one occasion he and a companion took shot- 
guns, and, disguised as highwaymen, stopped 
a stage-coach and frightened the passengers. 
Thereafter when the village schoolmaster wished 
to censure a boy he would often say, " You are as 
bad as Alfred Conkling and Charley Jones." 

The former entered Union College in 1806 and 
was graduated in 1810. Thus far the family had 



6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

been engaged in agricultural and commerical 
pursuits. Alfred Conkling was the first to gain 
distinction in professional and public life. He 
married Eliza Cockburn, May 5, 181 2. His wife 
was eighteen months his junior, having been born 
March 22, 1791. 

She was the daughter of James Cockburn, who 
was by profession a civil engineer and a relative 
of the late Lord Chief-Justice Cockburn of Eng- 
land. James Cockburn left Scotland early in the 
eighteenth century and went to the Bermudas. 
Thence he came to New York, and for many years 
he lived in the central part of the State. He 
married Margaret, daughter of Colonel Hendrick 
Prey, a feudal lord in the valley of the Mohawk. 
Their daughter Eliza was a noted beauty of the 
time and was called the " belle of the Mohawk 
Valley." She was a graceful dancer, and an 
heiress for those days, having a fortune of several 
thousand dollars. At the time of his marriage, 
Alfred Conkling was a law student in the office of 
Daniel Cady, of Johnstown, one of the leading 
advocates of the Empire State. Here the young 
couple resided for a year. They then removed to 
Canajoharie, in Montgomery County, where they 
lived for twelve years. They had three daugh- 
ters and four sons. The names of the latter 
were Frederick, Aurelian and Roscoe. The third 



GENE A LOG V. 



son was called Roscoe, but he died before the 
birth of the subject of this biography. 

Alfred Conkling practiced law at Canajoharie 
until the year 1818. He was then, at the age of 
twenty-nine, elected District-Attorney of Mont- 
gomery County. On one occasion when, at a trial 
for murder, he was summing up, the prisoner, be- 
ing a mason, made the sign of distress. District- 
Attorney Conkling was so enraged at the mere 
thought of the masonic order being used to de- 
feat the ends of justice that he at once resigned 
from his lodge. In 1820 Alfred Conkling was 
elected to the seventeenth Congress, and in 1825 
he was appointed United States District Judge 
for the northern district of New York. He held 
the latter position for twenty-seven years. 

Judge Conkling was the author of several 
works on the law, viz. : i. "The Young Citizen's 
Manual," 1836; 2. "Treatise on the Organization 
and Jurisdiction of the Supreme, Circuit and Dis- 
trict Courts of the United States," 1842 ; 3. "Juris- 
diction, Law and Practice in Admiralty and Mari- 
time Causes," 1848 ; and 4. " Powers of the Ex- 
ecutive Department of the United States," 1866. 
He also delivered many addresses before literary 
and collegiate societies. He had a keen, strong, 
highly cultivated intellect, an extraordinary charm 
of conversation, great power of labor, a courtly 



8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

manner, and a dignity that honored and guarded 
the high official trusts committed to his keeping. 

He moved in 1829 to Albany, where Roscoe,* 
the subject of this memoir, was born October 30, 
1829. He was never baptized, but his mother 
called him Roscoe, after the celebrated author of 
that name, whose works she was then reading. 

It is not generally known that Roscoe Conkling 
was born at Albany. For many years Judge 
Conkling's frame house at Amagansett, Suffolk 
County, New York, was commonly, although er- 
roneously, pointed out to travelers as " Roscoe 
Conkling's birthplace." As recently as the sum- 
mer of 1885 this house was thus described and 
shown to the author. 

* Roscoe Conkling the first was born January 13, 1828, and died July i, 
in the same year. 



I829-I850. 
CHAPTER II. 

THE BOYHOOD OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

"D OSCOE lived for nine years at Albany. His 
eldest brother, Frederick, was then a sales- 
man in the wholesale dry-goods business at New 
York. The three sisters and the other brother 
resided at home. 

Judge Conkling's district extended to Buffalo, 
and as the means of transportation were then 
primitive, he spent much time in traveling. Dur- 
ing his quarter of a century on the bench he tried 
many admiralty and patent causes, as well as suits 
in bankruptcy. The bankrupt law was passed 
during "his term, and the duties growing out of it 
proved very laborious to the Judge. 

In the summer of 1839 Judge Conkling decided 
to change his residence from Albany to Auburn. 
When the family was about to move Roscoe met 
with a severe accident. He was kicked in the face 
by a horse, his jawbone being broken. When the 
wound was dressed the boy was told to remain in 
bed, but he disobeyed the orders of both father 



lO LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

and surgeon, and diverted himself by making and 
flying a kite on the afternoon of the day of the 
accident ! When the physician permitted Roscoe 
to be moved, Judge Conkling, with his family, 
left Albany for Auburn on one of the com- 
mon freight and passenger canal-boats. The trip 
lasted several days, and the discomforts of travel 
would be appalling to those who now roll in a 
Wagner car from the State capital to Auburn in 
six hours ! 

In the stern of the canal-boat was a small apart- 
ment which served as saloon and stateroom; at 
night a cloth curtain was hung in the middle to 
divide the sexes. There was then no newsboy at 
hand with his attractive comic and illustrated 
papers. In the absence of awnings, the tourists 
sat on deck and took sun-baths. When "Low- 
bridge ! " was called, the ladies went below and the 
men "flattened" so as to avoid bumping their heads 
against the timbers; for there was not enough space 
for a chair on deck when the boat passed under a 
bridge. On Sunday the party reached Port Byron, 
which is seven miles from Auburn. Roscoe's trip 
on " Clinton's big ditch " made him a life-long 
friend of canals. It is worthy of remark that fifty 
years later, when a bill to appropriate $1,000,000 
was pending in the Legislature, a letter from Mr. 
Conkling was read wherein he advocated the pres- 



HE A TTENDS SCHOOL AT NEW YORK. 1 1 

ervation and improvement of the canals of New 

York. 

It was at the suggestion of WilUam H. Sew- 
ard that Judge ConkUng moved his family to 
Auburn. He Uved at ''Melrose." the name of his 
new residence, until about the year 1864. Roscoe 
was a romping boy and very fond of horses and 
dogs. His father gave him a white Canadian 
pony, which was the pride of his youthful days. 
His love of horseflesh clung to him, for in after 
years he once rode 500 miles in the far West. 
When a boy he had no taste for books and the 
work of the schoolroom was a hardship to him. 

He remained at Melrose till 184-2, when he 
went to the city of New York to enter the Mount 
Washington Collegiate Institute, of which Profes- 
sor George W. Clarke was the principal. It will 
be remembered that Mr. Clarke afterward became 
a member of Assembly from the city of New 
York, and at the Republican State Convention of 
1872 at Utica he nominated General John A. Dix 
for Governor. In leaving his son Roscoe with 
Professor Clarke, Judge Conkling said : " I have 
heard of you, and I want to put this lad of thir- 
teen under your care. He is utterly untutored, 
but he must be trained to studious habits. Please 
start him on the road to college." Young Roscoe 
studied for an academic year at this institution. 



12 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

It was during his residence in the metropoHs 
that young ConkUng received his first lessons in 
oratory. The eldest brother was then thirty years 
of age, and had acquired some reputation as a 
campaign speaker. They took lessons together 
from an English professor named Harvey, who 
had heard such masters of eloquence as Daniel 
O'Connell, Sir Robert Peel, and other political 
orators in the British Isles. They often delivered 
speeches to each other for the sake of practice, 
and used constantly a text-book, long since out of 
print, entitled " The Art of Speaking," published 
in London about the year 1787. In this volume 
were found not only the usual extracts from stand- 
ard writers of prose and poetry, but also a thorough 
treatise on the art of expression, including all forms 
of facial action, as well as of gesture. In 1843 
young Conkling entered the Auburn Academy, 
where he remained for three years. 

Judge Conkling being a man of high standing 
in professional and social life, his house was visit- 
ed by many learned and eminent men. In this 
atmosphere of law and politics Roscoe grew up, 
and having a very retentive memory, these early 
associations made him what might be called a boy 
of the world. Some of his father's visitors were 
Chancellor James Kent, ex-Presidents Van Buren 
and John Quincy Adams, ex-Governor Enos T. 



HE ENTERS THE A UB URN A CA DEM Y. 1 3 

Throop, Mr. Justice Smith Thompson, of the 
United States Supreme Court, and Thurlow Weed. 

He had inherited from his father an aptitude 
for pohtics, a genius for debate, a love of Hterature 
and a strong taste and fitness for the law. The 
Judee devoted as much time as he could snatch 
from his official duties to teaching his youngest 
son. His informal lessons, however, did not 
include oratory ; for, unlike his gifted son, the 
father was deficient in the qualities and graces 
of an orator. 

A schoolmate of young Conkling, who is now 
one of the most distinguished citizens of New 
York, thus speaks of his boyhood: 

Roscoe was large of his age, very athletic, vigorous in his 
movements, and easily superior to all others in the games and 
sports of childhood. He was noted then for the accuracy and 
copiousness of his diction. He was quick of learning, but had 
too much of a strong, physical, buoyant nature to make himself 
particularly observant of rules whose enforcement was supposed 
to be necessary to acquisition. He jumped the rules in every 
way a high-strung, boisterous boy could, but was never absent 
from recitation, never indifferent to the lessons, and was always up 
in class. 

He was gifted then, as ever since, with a wonderful memory, 
not only for what he heard and read, but for localities, facts and 
faces. What cost others a great effort in this respect seemed to 
be an intuition with him. He was as large and massive in his 
mind as in his frame, and accomplished in his studies precisely 
what he did in his social life — a mastery and command which 
his companions yielded to him as his due. There was no an- 
tagonism to him or jealousy of him in this recognition of his 



14 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONR'LING. 

superiority, either in his class or on the playground. He was as 
loyal and chivalrous then as he was in after life; and to be his 
friend was tantamount to having a protector whom no one dared 
to disturb. His affluent strength and consciousness of his own 
ability made him easily a recognized leader, and the position was 
accorded without envy, friction or complaint. No classmate ever 
felt that his leadership was an act of usurpation, or in any sense 
domineering. Though only fifteen years old at this time, he had 
a great store of memorized poetry and adages on hand, which he 
quoted freely in his school speeches and playground conversa- 
tions. This wonderful faculty grew with him, and no public man 
was ever better equipped with prose and poetical quotations illus- 
trative of his thoughts and arguments. 

Young Conkling's education was academic only. 
His impatience to begin the battle of life was such 
that he declined to enter upon a collegiate course 
of study. 

The reader will remember that in the fall of 
1842 Judge Conkling, in placing his son at Profes- 
sor Clarke's school, said, " Please start him on the 
road to college." The Judge being a graduate of 
Union College, it is probable that Roscoe would 
have entered this institution had he wished for a 
collegiate education. 

In the year 1846 he removed to Utica and 
entered the law offices of Spencer & Kernan as a 
student. Joshua A. Spencer was then one of the 
leading lawyers of the country. He had just 
successfully defended McLeod, under indictment 
for murder, and he had thus won fresh laurels 
in an international case which threatened to in- 



HE BEGINS THE STUD Y OF LAW. 1 5 

volve the United States In a war with England. 
Francis Kernan had been his partner since 
1840. 

Mr. Spencer was kind to the students in the 
office, but he was often absent from home, and too 
busy in the preparation of his cases specially to 
instruct any of the young men. He, however, 
gave to young Conkling during his four years' 
term of study in the office many valuable hints, 
which were not forgotten. In August, 1879, while 
speaking to a friend concerning the importance 
of pressing a case to trial at the right time, the 
writer heard Mr. Conkling remark, " Spencer used 
to say, ' Beat them when you can.' " 

The young man studied the characters of his 
preceptors, and while he made neither his model, 
he learned lessons from each. He admired Mr. 
Spencer's magnificent manner of accomplishing 
results, and emulated Mr. Kernan's application 
and exactness. 

Both Spencer and Conkling belonged to the 
Whig party, and the following anecdote shows 
that the former was, perhaps, responsible for the 
dibut of the latter as a campaign speaker. One 
day a countryman came to the great advocate 
and said : " Mr. Spencer, we want a man to speak 
at a Whig meeting out in our village. Send us 
some one who can assert himself, for there's a 



1 6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

big bully among the Democrats who breaks up 
our meetings." The reply was, " I shall send 
Mr. Conkling ; I think he will make himself 
heard." 

During the terrible famine in Ireland of 1847, 
Roscoe Conkling was but eighteen years of age, 
and yet his deep sympathy for the sufferers be- 
yond the sea enlisted him in their cause. He 
spoke at various places in Central New York in 
behalf of the starving multitudes of the Emerald 
Isle. 

When Roscoe Conkling became a resident of 
Utica, he soon entered the " society " of the city. 
Surrounded by a score of strong families, he im- 
proved his opportunities for social culture and 
refinement. 

Mr. Conkling spent his evenings to a great 
extent in the study of the best English literature, 
with which he became quite familiar and in which 
he took much delight. Of foreign languages he 
was ignorant, and so he remained till the day of 
his death. 

During the autumn of 1848 young Conkling 
spoke in behalf of the Whig candidates (Taylor 
and Fillmore) in a public hall at Rome. On this 
occasion the Hon. B. J. Beach (who was then the 
Whig member of Assembly from that district) 
presided, and at the close of his remarks con-. 



AN INTERESTING ANECDOTE. I 7 

gratulated the speaker '' for the marked abiUty of 
his effort." 

Referring- to his abhorrence of slavery, a distin- 
guished citizen of Utica, Mr. Theodore Pomeroy, 
has recently related the following anecdote : 

When Mr. Conkling was a law student at Utica, on a cer- 
tain occasion he happened to meet at the writer's residence a 
gentleman who since has occupied an important professorship in 
one of our oldest and most noted colleges. This gentleman be- 
ing a Southerner by birth, and then imbued with Southern sen- 
timents on the subject of slavery, in a conversation with Mr. 
Conkling entered upon an argumentative discussion in behalf of 
slavery in the Southern States. Young Conkling at once engaged 
in the discussion with characteristic point and power, arguing 
against the pretensions and claims of the South on this vital 
question, which, less than fifteen years thereafter, plunged the 
country into the horrors of civil war. The position assumed by 
Mr. Conkling in that early discussion in favor of freedom and hu- 
man rights was maintained by him with such an exhibition of 
intellectual skill and power, that the gentleman asked the writer, 
" Who is that young man I have so long been conversing with ? " 
On being informed that he was a law student, Roscoe Conkling 
by name, he replied, '' We will hear from him hereafter." The 
writer well remembers the impression that discussion of nearly 
forty years ago made upon the two or three persons that heard 
it, listening with no little surprise to the keen and decisive argu- 
ments with which he easily met and overpowered his skillful 
antagonist. But at that time we little imagined this brilliant 
young student was destined to become the most able and powerful 
of national leaders in advocating the claims of freedom and human- 
ity, to result in the final overthrow of the gigantic wrong contem- 
plated by making human slavery the corner-stone of the Republic. 

Mr. Conkling now began to use a series of 
scrap-books. His collections of news cuttings, 



1 8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Congressional and campaign speeches, and printed 
legal arguments are very comprehensive. 

Concerning the canal policy of the Empire 
State, Mr. Conkling was an ardent Whig, and a 
son of one who supported Governor Clinton in 
his great achievement of beginning and com- 
pleting the Erie Canal. He believed that cheap 
channels of trade and transportation, safe and 
spacious harbors, and navigable rivers free from 
impediment were essential to the prosperity of 
the State and nation. It is worthy of remark 
that nine years later, during his first Congressional 
campaign, Roscoe Conkling spoke of himself as 
"a Seward Whig." He was called " a busy per- 
sonal and political ally of William H. Seward." 

In the days of the old Whig party Mr. Conk- 
ling was a " Woolly Head" of the strongest Free- 
soil stamp. He remained with this faction of the 
Whig party until he joined the Republican party, 
soon after its organization. 



I850-I853. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE YOUNG LAWYER. 

T IKE that Revolutionary patriot, Gouverneur 
Morris, Roscoe Conkling was in the practice 
of law before he was of age. He was admitted 
to the bar in the early part of 1850, when in his 
twenty-first year. It is worthy of remark that his 
first law-suit was argued before Judge Conkling 
in the United States District Court at Utica. Al- 
though the Judge was a very Brutus in his utter 
want of partiality toward his son under such cir- 
cumstances, young Conkling won his case. 

Soon after his admission to the bar Mr. Conk- 
ling went with a party of citizens to Albany, and 
appeared before the Governor as their spokesman 
concerning a public measure. The office of District- 
Attorney then became vacant by the resignation 
of Calvert Comstock. Governor Fish appointed 
Roscoe Conkling April 22, 1850, to fill the place. 
The latter held the position throughout the year. 

The following letter, which was lately written 
by ex-Governor Fish to the author, thus explains 
the appointment of Roscoe Conkling : 



20 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONR'LTNG. 



New York, March 2, 1889. ) 



251 East Seventeenth Street. 

Dear Sir — I have but slight recollection of the cir- 
cumstances (beyond the general fact) of the appointment of your 
uncle as District-Attorney of Oneida County. I remember his 
presence in Albany — it was the first time I had met him — and that 
I was struck with his youthful appearance and the force of his 
manner. My present impression is that a vacancy had arisen in 
the office, and that the Whigs (we were Whigs at that time) and 
the bar and bench of the county, and a public concurrence of 
preference and recommendation, indicated Roscoe Conkling as 
the person to fill the vacancy. However perfunctory may have 
been my agency in this regard, I shall be pleased to think that I 
had some participation in the first introduction into official public 
life of Roscoe Conkling. 

******* 

Very faithfully yours, 

Hamilton Fish. 

Daniel Batchelor, of Utica, says of Roscoe Conk- 
ling : 

In his early days Mr. Conkling was not very popular 
amongst the legal profession, for he not only carried himself with 
an air of conscious superiority, but had also a rough side to his 
tongue. He could kill with an epithet or a metaphor just as easily 
then as, in after years, when in court or Senate he lanced an 
opponent. He once said of a bejewelled and much bedizened 
fop : " He looks like the cathedral of Milan decorated with five 
thousand statues and bas-reliefs !'' 

Extreme cleanliness) aversion to jewelry and perfumery on 
his person, were traits of his personal character. Method, order, 
arrangement, were his triune synonyms, and these qualities gov- 
erned his mental nature, as well as the use of the materials with 
which he worked. He would not read the newspaper till he had 
smoothly folded it the size of an even quarto or octavo ; nor 
would he put a bank-bill into his wallet until it was folded mid- 
way the length, and then exactly over the middle width. 



HE IS APPOINTED DISTRICT-ATTORNEY. 21 

This precision in everything was one of the traits that led 
to his great success in after life, for when meeting, as he some- 
times did, men of more knowledge than himself, he easily defeat- 
ed them by the use of his ready burnished weapons. His arrows 
were never entangled in the quiver, but were quickly drawn, and 
driven to the mark. 

Mr. Conkling-'s commission as District- Attorney 
was at once a passport to political as well as le- 
gal consideration. His twenty-first birthday was 
then six months in the future. He assumed im- 
mediately the responsibilities of the office, and 
decided to try cases without the aid of older 
counsel. This he did with much success, conduct- 
ing the trials of persons indicted for arson, larceny, 
forgery, and homicide. In the autumn Mr. Conk- 
ling was nominated as his own successor. The 
Whig ticket was defeated, but he received several 
hundred more votes than were given to his asso- 
ciates. Upon the expiration of his term of District- 
Attorney, Mr. Conkling opened a law office at 
Utica. He soon entered into partnership with the 
Hon. Thomas R. Walker, an ex -mayor of the 
city, and remained with him until 1855. Mr. 
Walker was an intimate friend of Mr. Conkling, 
and had a strong taste for English literature, 
which was of course a bond of union between 
them. 

Mr. Conkling was very fond of poetry. In his 
scrap-book of 1849 we find some of the earlier 



2 2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

poems of Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, 
Drake and Prentice, as well as many verses by 
the newspaper poets of the period. 

On September 13, 1851, as shown by the name 
and date in Mr. Conkling's handwriting on the 
fly-leaf, he bought the Works of Lord Byron, 
in verse and prose, including his letters and jour- 
nals. Many passages throughout this volume 
have his pencil marks in the margin. This is no- 
ticeable in the "Giaour," "Corsair" and " Childe 
Harold's Pilgrimage." The first - named poem 
was in substance committed to memory by Mr. 
Conkling several years afterward. The pages of 
"Childe Harold" contain many marks. 

The closing lines from the tenth stanza of 
" Mazeppa " are marked. These are very charac- 
teristic of the latter years of his life and illus- 
trate his proud spirit. 

" For time at last sets all things even — 
And if we do but watch the hour, 
There never yet was human power 
Which could evade, if unforgiven, 
The patient search and vigil long 
Of him who treasures up a wrong." 

One of his favorite verses was: 

*' Still was his soul unsated 
As the ocean on the beach 
Moans for the inland quiet 
Its waves can never reach." 



THE BAR OF ONEIDA COUNTY. 



23 



A young lawyer is often retained to oppose his 
former legal preceptors and counselors. It so 
happened that Francis Kernan was destined to 
cross swords with Roscoe Conkling in both legal 
and political arenas. For fully fifteen years these 
two lawyers were frequently engaged on opposite 
sides of important cases. They were also com- 
peting candidates for Congressional honors in the 
campaigns of 1862 and 1864, and they afterward 
became colleagues in the Senate. 

After forming the legal partnership with the 
late Thomas R. Walker, Mr. Conkling rapidly 
rose to prominence at the bar of Oneida County, 
which, for a quarter of a century, had furnished 
many distinguished men to the Bench and the 
State government. The list included such lead- 
ing lawyers as Joshua A. Spencer, Francis Kernan, 
William and Charles Tracy, William J. Bacon, 
Philo Gridley, Samuel Beardsley, Timothy Jen- 
kins, Ward Hunt, Charles H. DooHttle, P. Shel- 
don Root, Charles P. Kirkland, Hiram Denio, 
D. C. Pomeroy and Henry A. Foster. 

Mr. Conkling's experience as public prosecutor 
had given him much more court practice than a 
young man just admitted to the bar usually ob- 
tains. He soon won a reputation for brilliancy in 
the court-room. He had great confidence in him- 
self. His quick retorts and the thorough prepara- 



24 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

tion of his cases often disconcerted older attorneys, 
who were disposed to try suits on general knowl- 
edge. At this early age the young advocate 
adopted the rule to make his client's cause his own. 

It is not too much to say that no lawyer in New 
York ever devoted himself more earnestly to the 
interests of his clients than did Roscoe Conkling. 
He had great aptness in preparing a case which 
required technical knowledge. 

The biographer wishes to give a tolerably full 
record of Roscoe Conkling's early life at the bar 
for two reasons : 

First. His enemies (even in obituary notices) 
have asserted that legal practice was distasteful 
to him, and that hence it was abandoned for polit- 
ical honors ; and second, because the fame of the 
advocate is short-lived, and he is not generally 
appreciated by those who do not personally know 
him. 

It was in these early years that Roscoe Conk- 
ling laid the foundation of his great forensic elo- 
quence. His contemporaries state that he was then 
an awkward and somewhat hesitating speaker. 

One day, in conversation with a prominent pub- 
lic man of Utica, his older brother Aurelian said, 

in his presence, "Mr. B , what do you think 

of Roscoe's elocution ?" The answer was, " I 
don't like the parenthesis ;" whereupon Roscoe 



THE YOUNG CAMPAIGN SPEAKER. 25 

exclaimed, " What's that ?" Mr. B then ex- 
plained the "parenthesis" by placing his arms 
akimbo. The young orator saw the point at 
once and afterward avoided this ungraceful 
position. 

Like many young attorneys, Mr. Conkling com- 
bined law with politics. The year 1852 was the 
period of another national contest ; and the time 
had come for the Whig party " to do or die." 

The Whig party was about to split on the 
subject of slavery in the Territories. Although 
young Conkling was born in a slave-holder's fam- 
ily, we have already learned of his abhorrence to 
enslavement. He entered the canvass early, for 
among his old papers there is the outline of a 
campaign speech, dated June 28. It consists of 
fourteen heads. To show the reader Mr. Conk- 
ling's habit of speaking from memoranda, it is 
given below just as he wrote it. The speech was 
delivered at Mechanics' Hall in Utica June 29. 

(i) Vast and various misinformation, &c. 

(2) Kangaroo ticket. 

(3) History could be written without the use of P.'s name. 

(4) History of the world made up of the biography of men, &c. 

(5) Geo. M. Dallas and Pillow spoke at Philadelphia of the 
religious test, &c. " Save me from my friends, &c." 

(6) P.'s letter of acceptance, " painful apprehension," victim 
for Nov. sacrifice. Masses said in all the Democratic churches. 

(7) Political nightmare. 

(8) Platform. Geographers look at celestial bodies, &c. 



26 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

(9) Father's biography. Noble birth. Lamps lit at Mercer 
street oil house. Ohio paper thinks he took possession of Pike's 
army at York in 18 14. 

(10) Scott at Lundy's Lane. Shooting off his epaulettes. 

(11) Pierce a Gin, like. How many legs has the cat, calling 
her tail one; but four, as calling her tail one does not make it one. 

(12) "Our army swore terribly in Flanders." 

(13) " All Pierce's relatives," soldiers, only equaled by Tony 
Lumpkin's account; he said his father was in the Grenadiers, his 
uncle was a colonel in the militia, and his aunt was a justice of 
the peace. 

(14) Tammany society wrote a letter of invitation to a man 
who hung himself 3 years ago. 

It will be seen that the speech refers entirely to 
the Presidental candidates. 

During the campaign Roscoe Conkling maae 
several speeches. Two of them, which refer to 
national issues, were written out before delivery. 
So far as the biographer knows, these are the only 
cases where, since his entrance to public life, he 
thus prepared a stump-speech. Extracts from 
these addresses will be published on subse- 
quent pages. As an exercise of memory, he often 
wrote down from recollection remarks which he 
had made in public. We print a part of such a 
composition. The indorsement on the address 
shows that it was delivered in Ulster County, 
New York, in 1852. The reader may compare 
young Conkling's style (as shown in this extract) 
with his mode of expressing thought after enter- 
ing the Senate of the United States. 



HE DISCUSSES THE ISSUE OF i8j2. 2 J 

There may be those before me who consider the approaching 
election a mere ripple in the current of political events — who 
regard it as a mere choice between individuals, a mere personal 
preference for men. But he who duly ponders upon the subject 
cannot resist the conclusion that, in the magnitude and duration 
of its results, it stands almost unrivalled in the tiistory of our 
popular elections. Never before, but once, has been presented 
unembarrassed to the American people the leading issue of the 
present contest. In 1844 the great question upon the political 
tapis was the annexation of Texas. In 1848 the Wilmot Proviso 
was before the country, and questions springing from slavery 
and the Territories were the absorbing topics of that campaign. 
In 1840 was presented, as is now presented to the electors of 
America, the principle of protecting home manufactures, and 
then that principle was affirmed with a unanimity without par- 
allel in the history of controverted political doctrines. With the 
election of General Harrison in 1840 came a Whig Congress, and 
with a Whig Congress came the Tariff of 1842. 0/ the results 
which followed, it is not necessary for me to speak. 

Every rivulet in the free States was becoming harnessed and 
filtered by machinery; almost every stream was made to work its 
passage to the ocean, and the very foam upon its bosom became 
a circulating medium. In 1844 we were defeated, partly by the 
introduction of the Texas question, but partly by another cause, 
which it is well to pause to consider. Long before the canvass 
closed it was understood that the State of Pennsylvania would 
be the Waterloo of the contest, and that the vote of that State 
must be carried for Mr. Polk, or his election be lost. The vote 
of Pennsylvania was carried for Polk and Dallas, and how was it 
done ? By an appeal to the popularity of the Whig doctrine of 
*' Protection to Am.erican Labor." By the circulation of the 
Kane letter and other kindred frauds, pledging Mr. Polk to a 
protective tariff. Bald and shallow as the deception was, it suc- 
ceeded; and the votes of the manufacturers and operatives of 
the State of Pennsylvania were procured for men who, when once 
secure in their places, turned out to be the most bitter, unrelent- 
ing, uncompromising foes of the best interests of those whose 
support had raised them to power. With the defeat of Mr. Clay 



28 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

in 1844 came a Locofoco Congress, and then followed a repeal of 
the Tariff of 1842. 

Thus Mr. Conkling described the depression of 
business: 

The effects of this change are now before us. The dark- 
ness of night is now resting upon populous regions which then 
were luminous with the fires of prosperity and industry; and 
where once the clatter of machinery and the busy hum of 
well-paid labor was heard, the death-like stillness is now un- 
• broken, save by the sound of the sheriff's hammer. If you 
would know what has befallen the manufacturers of Pennsyl- 
vania, you will find in the newspapers of that State, under the 
sheriff's advertisements, the scant)' story of their fate. One of 
the public prints in the county of Clarion contains seven col- 
umns of execution advertisements, the property to be sold con- 
sisting exclusively of manufacturing buildings and apparatus. 
Twenty-three furnaces and workshops have already been sold at 
public vendue, upon executions against their ruined owners, and 
all to fulfil the destiny of the horizontal, Locofoco, ad valorem, 
free-trade tariff of 1846. 

Now, again, for the first time since 1840, is presented to your 
consideration, unentangled with any paramount issue, the ques- 
tion of protecting American labor; and the decision now to be 
rendered upon that question will endure perhaps as long as our 
political institutions endure, either as a monument of political 
wisdom or a monument of political folly. 

Here the speaker referred to certain EngUsh 
influences upon our elections : 

It has often been said, I believe truly, that money was sent 
here from abroad to carry our elections in favor of the princi- 
ples and candidates of free trade; but never before, as far as I 
know, since the separation of the colonies from the mother coun- 
try has so open and avowed an intimacy existed between the 
politicians of England and the Old World and the politics of this 
country as now. 



FRANKLIN PIERCE AND FREE TRADE. 2Q 

That General Pierce is running with great popularity among 
the rich men and capitalists of England is sufficiently manifest 
from articles in the London Times, the London Leader, the Bir- 
mingham and Manchester newspapers, and the other free-trade 
presses of England. If you have read them, you have read 
denunciations of General Scott and encomiums upon General 
Pierce, for the avowed reason that Mr. Pierce, if elected, will 
prove " a valuable practical ally to the C07nmercial policy of Great 
Britain." It is because an American President will exert the 
power of his office to maintain a policy which, if established, will 
realize the British manufacturer's boast, that "he will clothe 
the world," a policy which, if carried out to the uttermost, will 
render the whole ocean one splendid parade-ground for the 
navies of England. And why ? Because America cannot, and, 
for one, I trust in God she will never, sink so low in wretchedness 
that she can compete unaided in cheapness of products with the 
pauper labor of England. Because a system exists in England, 
a system of double-distilled slavery, a system of grinding oppres- 
sion, a political and social system, which enables the rich man to 
wring from the poor man the products of his labor at prices at 
which an American mechanic would starve. Because human 
beings in England live like beasts, and the tariff of wages is so 
adjusted as just to prevent starvation, without leaving to the 
laborer one farthing for any of the necessities peculiar to human 
life. Every American elector before casting his vote should hear 
or read an account of the lives of the manufacturing population 
in the dominions of the British Queen. He should know some- 
thing of the existence of those whose fingers spin the fabrics and 

manufacture the articles which are sent here from abroad. 
******* 

He will then appreciate in part the merits of the principles of 
^'■free-trade," a system which flourishes in England because ?ts 
basis there is money against life, so many pieces of silver for so 
many ounces of blood. 

Every American who would estimate the reason that England 

is able to produce manufactured articles cheaper than we can, 

should remember the awful tribute-money paid in life and health 

and misery by the poor into the coffers of the rich. 

******* 



30 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

American slavery is spoken of as an unmixed and unmitigated 
social, political and moral evil. I believe it is one of the black- 
est and bloodiest pictures in the book of modern times. Surely 
there can be few greater monstrosities than the proposition 
that man can hold property in man, that one race has a right 
to enslave another, whose only sin consists in being the progeny 
of tiger-hunters on the gold coast of Africa, and I have to medi- 
tate upon the justice of Almighty Providence, and to believe 
that the man is not now unborn by whose hand the accursed 
institution of American slavery shall perish from the earth! But 
American slavery compared to English slavery, compared in the 
magnitude of its horrors with the oppression of the laborers of 
Great Britain, compared with the condition of things which must 
exist here before Americans can compete with Englishmen in 
cheapness of manufactured productions — American slavery, when 
brought into contrast with these, is as much to be preferred as 
the Christian religion is preferable to the dark idolatry of chance. 



In this campaign Mr. Conkling-'s speeches were 
more "personal" than those of later years, when 
he became one of the ablest orators of the Union. 
Without referring to the private life of Scott and 
Pierce, he indulged in personalities. He gave his 
hearers many sharp sayings. He praised Scott 
and ridiculed Pierce. After the nomination of 
the State ticket in September, he varied the dis- 
cussion of national affairs with State issues. He 
said much concerning canals and river and harbor 
improvements. He dwelt upon the fact that the 
candidate of the Democratic party had usually 
opposed internal improvements. Roscoe Conk- 
ling acquired early the habit of quoting poetry in 



AN ANECDOTE OF WINFIELD SCOTT. 3 I 

his addresses. He was also fond of recitation, his 
favorite pieces being Campbell's " Lord UUin's 
Daughter," and " Belshazzar's Feast," by Byron. 
In later years he rarely spoke in Congress or upon 
the platform without repeating one or more lines 
from some standard author. 

In a ratification meeting at Rome he referred to 
the recent death of Henry Clay*, the great Whig 
leader, who came so near being elected President 
in 1844. 

When Winfield Scott was canvassing the State, 
Roscoe Conkling was introduced to him as "the 
rising young orator, who would stump the north- 
ern tier of counties of New York." The interview 
took place at Schenectady on a New York Central 
Railroad train. "Tell our friends, Mr. Conkling," 
said the hero of the Mexican War, " I am certain 
of carrying all but nine States in the Union, and 
we will probably carry all but three." Young 
Conkling smiled, but remained silent, for he knew 
that General Scott had drawn a long bow. The 
sequel showed that Scott, like Henry Clay in 1824, 
received the electoral vote of but four States ; viz., 
Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky and Tennes- 
see. 

The Whig State Convention of 128 delegates 
met in the City Hall at Syracuse, September 22, 

* At Washington, June 29, 1852. 



32 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

1852. On that occasion there was a contest In the 
Fourth Assembly District of Oneida County (north 
of Utica). It was adjudged to the contestant, 
who then made Roscoe Conkhng his substitute. 
The Convention was a very staid body. Washing- 
ton Hunt, of Niagara, was renominated for Gov- 
ernor ; WilHam Kent, of New York, was named 
for Lieutenant-Governor ; and Thomas R. Kemp- 
shall, of Monroe, for Canal Commissioner. Up to 
this time not a ripple disturbed the political sur- 
face. The several candidates had been proposed 
and nominated without even the semblance of a 
contest. When the nomination for Inspector of 
State Prisons was announced, Epenetus Crosby, 
of Dutchess, the " Silver Gray," was named. Mr. 
Conkling then arose, and proposed A. D. Barber, 
an innkeeper at New London, on the Erie Canal. 
The correspondent"' of the Associated Press has 
recently given the author the following account of 
this speech : 

Mr. Conkling was youthful in appearance, but by no means 
boyish. His manner was daring, impassioned, and as if desirous 
to make a good impression. He appeared more courteous and 
deferential than any other speaker. The others were grave, like 
a Presbyterian conference meeting ; he was like a young man in 
a debating society, resolute to carry his point, and eager to make 
a good impression. 

His later efforts were generally somewhat different. His 
voice was pleasant in tone, the emphasis and cadences well 

* Dr. Alexander Wilder. 



RIVAL CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES. -y^-^ 

turned— as though fresh from school, and yet no schoolboy ; 
and I remember that I liked to hear him. 

His dress was almost " foppish." It was everything in place, 
and set him off well. Indeed, it was as a part of him ; which is 
the true excellence of clothing. His movements were rapid, but 
not sudden. 

It was in this canvass that Mr. ConkHng won 
his reputation as a campaign speaker. 

The Whig' County Convention assembled at 
American Hall, Rome, September 30. Mr. Conk- 
ling was a delegate from the fourth ward of Utica. 
When nominations for member of Congress were 
in order he presented the name of the Hon. Will- 
iam J. Bacon. He did not, however, receive the 
support of the convention, for when a ballot was 
taken, Orsamus B. Matteson was nominated by a 
large majority. Mr. Conkling then moved that 
the nomination of Mr. Matteson be made unani- 
mous. The delegates then proceeded to ballot 
for sheriff, county clerk, coroner and other officers. 

In the early part of October a bolt was organ- 
ized in the Whig party, which resulted in the 
nomination of the Hon. Joshua A, Spencer as an in- 
dependent candidate for Congress. Mr. Conkling, 
having been a pupil of Mr. Spencer, felt under 
personal obligations to him for many acts of kind- 
ness. He also admired, as all v/ho knew him did, 
the ability and character of that Nestor of the 
Oneida bar. Mr. Matteson was the regular Whig 



34 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONKLING. 

candidate, but had no personal claims of any sort 
on Mr. Conkling. Yet Mr. Conkling took strong 
and active ground for Mr. Matteson, as well as 
for the rest of the ticket. For his zeal and effi- 
ciency in that behalf, he received the censure of 
many who knew his relations with Mr. Spencer. 
Mr. Conkling", however, then recognized the vital- 
ity of political principles and the necessity of 
party organizations for putting them in practice. 
For that reason he opposed his near and revered 
friend, and supported, to the extent of his ability, 
the " regular " candidate of his party. 

During the remainder of the campaign Roscoe 
Conkling devoted much time to the support of the 
Whig ticket. He spoke at Newark, N. J., near 
Elizabeth, where General Scott then resided. 
Judging from his custom of later years, he must 
have paid the expenses of his trip to New Jersey. 
Considering his small means, this was a sacrifice 
of interest to political duty. The last Whig rally 
of the campaign in Oswego County was held at 
the City Hall in Oswego November i, the eve of 
the national election. All citizens in favor of 
prosecuting the work on the Oswego Canal were 
urged to attend. Mr. Conkling was one of the 
speakers, and concerning him the Daily Tiines 
said, " Mr. Conkling is the man to expose the 
soft-soap fallacies of Horatio Seymour." 



EXAMPLES OF MR. CONK LING'S COURAGE. 35 

The second of November was a disastrous day 
for the Whigs. The result of the national elec- 
tion showed that Franklin Pierce had carried all 
but four States, and that his plurality over General 
Scott was 215,000. At the same time the Free-soil 
Democrats polled 156,000 votes for Hale and Jul- 
ian. The Whig State ticket was also defeated, 
Horatio Seymour being successful. This election 
proved to be the funeral of the Whigs as a na- 
tional party. Slavery and "know-nothingism" 
speedily became the leading issues in national 
politics. 

As to Roscoe Conkling's high courage, a com- 
panion of his youth relates the following : 

When Mr. Conkling was about thirty years of age I was once 
going with him towards Genesee Street bridge, when we saw a 
negro on the dock dripping wet and shivering. A lot of loafers 
were laughing at him. Mr. Conkling, on learning that one of 
these fellows had thrown the poor negro into the canal, rapidly 
descended the steps and asked: " Which of you cowardly rascals 
threw that man into the canal ? " No one answering, Mr. Conkling 
again said: "If I knew who the dastardly whelp was, I would 
throw him into the canal. Will somebody point him out to me ? " 
No one replying, Mr. Conkling berated and defied the entire 
crowd, not one of which dared to open his mouth. On one occa- 
sion, after Mr. Conkling had been cheated out of his election, he 
denounced at a large public meeting, two of the corrupters, who 
were rich and influential, as "A, the thief, and B, the accomplice." 
And yet he rarely spoke of a traducer, and never berated him to 
anybody; a mere " Yes " and " No " was about all he would say of 
such an one, or, " He is not worth talking of." If a person of influ- 
ence was incorrigible, Mr. Conkling would say, "We won't talk 



36 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

about him, we will fight him;" and it was the inspiring fighting 
qualities of Mr. Conkling, his intrepidity and endurance, that 
carried him through in many a conflict. 

He was kind and charitable to the poor, and ever accessible 
to such, and also to the humblest laborer. With the intellectual 
he would hold high converse. With the unlearned he was very 
patient, and seemed to delight in talking down to their level. 

It is also quite certain that he knew the colloquial vernacular, 
and could use it as deftly as a drayman or a stevedore. A signifi- 
cant story, either denunciatory or witty, he always enjoyed, and 
he would repeat it with much laughter. 

Roscoe Conkling was always an ardent advo- 
cate of physical culture, and took great pride in 
maintaining his magnificent physique in the most 
robust condition. His muscular exercise co.nsisted 
in horseback-riding and boxing. Soon after his 
admission to the bar he bought a fine horse, which 
soon became nearly as famous on the streets of 
Utica as was the rider. While mounted he would 
often stop and shake hands with a day-laborer. 
This habit was said by his critics to be a way of 
fishing for votes, to the end that he might curry 
favor with the common people. 

He frequently sparred with " Bill " Supple, then 
a noted athlete of Utica, and now (1889) the jani- 
tor of the City Hall. In a recent conversation 
with the writer, Mr. Supple said, " While boxing, 
the Senator was very quick in getting back his 
head out of my reach." Mr. Conkling's taste for 
sparring in those days led to a great liberty, which 



A FA VORITE BOOK OF ELOQUENCE. 37 

the newspaper correspondents at Washington 
took with his name after he entered the Senate. 
At frequent intervals, when short of material for 
letters, they would write and " revamp," with 
variations, the well-known story of a dinner-party 
at the house of Senator "Zach" Chandler, after 
which the company adjourned to the library, and 
Senator Conkling was alleged to have put on 
the gloves with a Mr. " Howard," of Detroit. The 
mysterious gentleman was originally '' Ned " 
Price the noted pugilist. Later on he was said 
to be " Jem " Mace. As the result of the boxing- 
match, Senator Conkling, in the language of the 
prize ring, was "knocked out." 

It is unnecessary to say that the story was ab- 
solutely false. 

In 1852 Roscoe Conkling was presented by his 
brother Frederick with a copy of Professor C. A. 
Goodrich's Select Bjntish Eloquence. He affix- 
ed pencil marks to many passages in the writ- 
ings of the great forensic orators, Chatham, Burke, 
Fox, Pitt, Erskine, Mansfield and Grattan. A 
careful perusal of his speeches shows that in later 
years he often quoted these masters of eloquence, 
as well as the pieces of poetry which he learned 
in his early life. 

Mr. Conkling was also a great admirer and fre- 
quent quoter of Lord Macaulay. In his earlier 



38 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK'LING. 

years he bought an edition of this author's Mis- 
cellaneous Essays, which he used much as a vade- 
mecum. Looking through this vokime, we find 
copious pencil marks in the margin of the " gems" 
in the essays on Mikon, MachiavelH, Mackintosh's 
History of the Revolution in England in 1688, Hal- 
lam's Constitutional Hist cry, ViO'S,v^€\X's> Life ofjohn- 
S071, Thackeray's History of the Earl of CJiatham, 
Mitford's History of Greece, Frederick the Great, 
the Lays of Ancient Rome and Barere's Memoirs. 
A transcript of the above passages would consume 
too much space in this volume. Suffice it to say 
that in some essays, e. g., Milton, long paragraphs 
are marked, the substance of which Mr. Conkling 
committed to memory. In the last speech writ- 
ten by him, viz., " Remarks to be made upon the 
death of Chief -Justice Waite at the memorial 
meeting of the Bar Association of the city of 
New York," we find a quotation from page 16 
of Macaulay's description of the Puritans in the 
essay on Milton. This address is published in 
fill in the latter part of this volume. 

In December Mr. John Bryan gave a banquet 
at Utica to some friends of the Irish cause. A 
reference was made to Judge Conkling, who 
was then the American Minister to Mexico. Mr. 
Conkling made a short speech the substance of 
which is here given just as he wrote it. The in- 



A SOCIAL OCCASION. 39 

dorsement reads, " Return of thanks at Mr. Bry- 
an's supper, Dec. 6, 1852. — R. C." 

Gentleme7i—Yow will believe that I am not without hesita- 
tion or emotion in rising to tender to you all my heartfelt thanks 
for the friendly sentiment which has been offered and received 
in honor of one dear to me, now far away performing a distant 
pilgrimage as the servant of his country. Beyond acknowledging, 
in behalf of my absent father, the compliment paid to him, I 
should not attempt a word on this occasion, hallowed as it is by 
the presence of the illustrious stranger in honor of whom we 
have met together. 

To an occasion like this, faultless save that, like everything 
dear and fair, it is passing away— to an occasion when, as the 
poet has expressed it, 

'" Wishes for fair ones are around offered up 

From each lip that is wet with the dew of the cup," 

nothing which I could say would be a desirable addition : there 
are too many others, there is too much else here to please and 
engage your attention. Before sitting down, however, suffer me 
to give you as a sentiment the fate of an isle of the ocean lying 
" far from the land where her young hero" breathes. May the 
shamrock spring up on her bosom, where now stand the barracks 
of a British soldiery, and may no more sacrilegious foot-prints be 
left upon turf once pressed by the feet of liberty. 

A famous case in its day was the trial of Syl- 
vester Hadcock for the crime of forgery. It was 
Roscoe ConkUng's second case at the bar of Her- 
kimer. The indictment was found at a Court 
of Oyer and Terminer, held May, 1853, in that 
county. At the December term in the same year 
the prisoner was brought to trial before Judge 
W. F. Allen. Mr. Conkling defended the ac- 
cused, and proved that his client could not write, 



40 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

whereupon the jury rendered a verdict of "not 
guilty." 

It was a great victory for him, for his old and 
able preceptor, Joshua A. Spencer, aided the Dis- 
trict-Attorney. He took great exception to Mr. 
Spencer's part in the case. He argued that one 
Roger Hawkins was the real plaintiff, and that he 
had retained the famous advocate to persecute his 
client. After the trial, Mr. Conkling wrote out 
the substance of his " summing up," but it is too 
long for publication. It is dated January 22, 1854. 

Mr. B. F. Maxson, who is now (i88g) a mem- 
ber of the Rochester bar, was associated with Mr. 
Conkling in the defence of Hadcock ; and, in a 
recent letter to the author, he gives the following 
account of this noted trial : 

Among the earlier notable efforts of Roscoe Conkling may be 
mentioned the case of the People against Sylvester Hadcock, 
the trial of which commenced at Herkimer, December 20, 1853. 

The defendant was arraigned and tried on an indictment for ut- 
tering and publishing a receipt of $725, as and for a receipt for only 
$25. The trial commenced in the morning and continued to quite 
a late hour in the evening, when the evidence closed, and the court 
adjourned to 9 o'clock the following morning for the argument 
of counsel. After adjournment we retired to our rooms at the 
hotel for consultation as to the course to pursue in the arguments, 
as to the points to dwell upon, and as to those which should be 
unnoticed, and which if alluded to would afford a wicked club 
in the hands of the great giant against whom we were to con- 
tend. During the trial the Court House was crowded to its fullest 
capacity, as it was on the opening of the Court for the argument 
of the cause. Hadcock, I think, had occupied the position of 



THE TRIAL OF SYLVESTER HAD COCK. 4 1 

Supervisor in the county; was a well-to-do farmer, and had always 
sustained a reputable character, and was the father of quite a 
large family of young children, to whom he was greatly attached. 
Hawkins, upon whose oath the People chiefly depended, had 
not been in this country long enough to gain a reputation either 
good or bad, and he could not, therefore, be impeached. The 
evidence, however, showed that he had passed under different 
names, and that he told some one that he had sold a flock of 
sheep in Ireland, got the money for them, and made the man pay 
for them over again. This evidence afforded a little handle for 
Mr. Conkling, and he used it in a manner surprising to all. 

***** After marking out the course which Spencer 
would likely pursue, Mr. Conkling directed his attention to the 
evidence and character of the parties and witnesses in the case, 
and having portrayed in glowing language the character and 
standing of the defendant in the community where he was best 
known, inquired of the jury " if they were to convict the defendant 
upon the testimony of that old Irishman who fled his country for 
his country's good, and didn't think enough of his son to go to 
New York to see him respectably buried. If they were to hang his 
hat upon the nail to moulder in the cobwebs, whilst he served his 
term in State's prison, should he live to survive that -term. If 
they were to make vacant the seat at the table where the wife 
and dear little children were wont to assemble in family devotion, 
upon such evidence, if so, it would be an occasion of the deepest 
humiliation," &c. * * * 

Mr. Conkling was listened to with the profoundest attention 
throughout. His peroration was superlatively grand, and of a 
character calculated to produce the keenest emotions. The stal- 
wart and hard-hearted struggled hard to suppress tears which 
would come. Jurors were brought to their elbows, with hand- 
kerchiefs to their eyes; and when Mr. Conkling sat down, the jury 

would have said fiot guilty, in a second. 

******* 

Then follows a description of Mr. Spencer's 
"summing up," wherein he referred to Mr. Conk- 
ling as "my young friend." 



I853-I858. 

CHAPTER IV. 

LEGAL PRACTICE AND LOCAL POLITICS. 

"P OSCOE CONKLING was now known as a 
campaign speaker throughout the Empire 
State. His reputation as a lawyer gradually ex- 
tended beyond the county of Oneida. The dis- 
tinction between attorneys and counselors was 
then sharply defined. The young advocate would 
not retain counsel, and hence was not popular 
with the older members of the profession. His 
courage in court, as well as his unbounded confi- 
dence in himself, stirred up much feeling against 
him. 

During the latter part of the summer Roscoe 
Conkling's name was mentioned as a candidate 
for Attorney-General. The Whig State Convention 
met in September, but not being on the " slate," 
he failed to receive the nomination. He was much 
disappointed at the result; and a few days after- 
ward he wrote, as a mental exercise, what he would 
have said if nominated. 

The year 1854 was eventful for the Whigs and 



MR. JUSTICE HUNT'S OPINION. 43 

" Silver Grays " but not for Roscoe Conkling. 
During' this period he neither sought nor received 
poUtical preferment. lie was heartily in love with 
his profession. 

Mr. Justice Ward Hunt once wrote the follow- 
ing description of Mr. Conkling as an advocate: 

As a jury lawyer he was wonderfully successful, equalling 
in the public judgment his brilliajit preceptor. He was deemed 
by those who knew him but slightly, as a man of great powers of 
eloquence, and his success was attributed to his eloquence. This 
was a great error. He was indeed a man of eloquence, possess- 
ing a flow of language, a variety of illustration, and an oratorical 
capacity rarely equalled. He owed much of his success, how- 
ever, to his diligence and industry. He possessed a capacity of 
labor unknown to most men. Mr. Conkling never tried a case, in 
which he was retained in season to enable him to do so, without 
thoroughly preparing himself upon the law of his case, and with- 
out a careful examination of his witnesses before they appeared 
in court. When the time came he was always ready, his wit- 
nesses testified to what he expected, and he produced the author- 
ities to sustain his position. Then it was and in aid of these 
qualities that he allowed his eloquence to be brought to the front. 

In those days there were no official stenogra- 
phers, all reporting being done in long-hand. This 
fact may account for Mr. Conklmg's habit of tak- 
ing copious notes during a trial. At the present 
day lawyers depend chiefly upon the stenogra- 
pher's minutes for their testimony. Roscoe Conk- 
ling had several suits in which ex-Judge Philo 
Gndley was opposed to him. The latter always 
made his client's case his own. In his estimation, 



44 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the party as well as the attorney on the other side, 
were rascals. He was disposed to ridicule and 
browbeat his adversary. Hence it followed, from 
the temperament of the two counselors, that when 
Philo Gridley and Roscoe Conkling were on oppo- 
site sides, they had a severe forensic struggle. 
Then parties to the record could not be witnesses, 
and advocates oftentimes assumed what was diffi- 
cult of proof. 

We have learned the young lawyer's method and 
precision in matters of every-day life. He was 
equally exacting in the court-room, tie would 
wrap up in paper his legal books until ready for 
use in court, instead of letting them lie on the 
lawyers' table, where " the other side" could bor- 
row the authorities which he was about to cite. 
He thought it was quite as important to hide his 
books as his brief. Being a very nervous man, he 
could not bear to have his person or even his chair 
touched by others ; and he has more than once 
said that he feared he might lose his case in court 
by some ill-bred neighbor insisting upon putting 
his foot on his chair. He was not then disposed 
to accept retainers unless he knew that he could 
succeed on the law and the facts. He preferred 
to settle a suit out of court if the chances seemed 
hopeless, and he often sent to legal fiuends " des- 
perate" and contingent cases 



A MEMORABLE LA W SULT. 45 

Like other members of his family, Mr. Conk- 
Hng detested tobacco in every form. If a cHent or 
clerk smoked a cigar in his office, he would, on 
entering the room, even in winter, rush to the win- 
dow and throw it wide open, to allow the foul 
odor to escape. 

As an example of the overwhelming way in 
which he sometimes attacked the opposing party, 
the author will cite the case of " Doe vs. Roe," at 
the Oneida Circuit. The descendants of the de- 
fendant in this suit are still living, so it is deemed 
wise to omit the real names. This was an equity 
suit to set aside the security for a loan. The 
ground of action was that the loan was usurious, 
and the transaction fraudulent. Roe made the 
loan to Doe and the latter became the plaintiff. 
Upon the motion, an issue of fact was formed for a 
jury ; and at the trial ex-Judge Gridley was asso- 
ciated with Roscoe Conkling as counsel for Doe. 
The plaintiff {Doe') had no witness but himself. 
On the cross-examination the defence produced 
two or more papers signed and sworn to by him, 
and given upon the loan, and the renewals there- 
of, in each of which he stated that there was no 
fraud and no usury. 

The plaintiff was so completely discredited by 
this testimony that Judge Gridley thought it a farce 
to go on ; but his associate was determined to pro- 



46 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

ceed. Doc, on re-direct examination, persisted in 
his story and said that Roe had forced him to sign 
and swear to the papers. The defendant was 
then sworn, denied all the fraud, usury, compul- 
sion, etc., and furnished some corroborating 
evidence. He was subjected to a long and mer- 
ciless cross-examination by Mr. Conkling, who 
then summed up with great power. The audience, 
in one or two instances, gave w^ay to applause 
and throughout the address to the jury refrained, 
with much difficulty, from constant demonstra- 
tions. The " scoring" that the defendant received 
was fearful. After the charge of the Judge, the 
jury very promptly brought in a verdict for Doe. 

In speaking of Roscoe Conkling's great capac- 
ity for preparing a case at short notice, one of 
his contemporaries has lately said to the author : 
" Conkling could look into a law-book and soak 
up law like a sponge." 

In summing up before juries Mr. Conkling 
often indulged in many sharp sayings. He some- 
times gave the " other side" a terrible "word-lash- 
ing" by using alternately the severest censure and 
the most cutting ridicule. When appearing for 
the plaintiff, he would, in some cases, assume that 
a verdict in his favor was a certainty. Under such 
conditions, he would read a newspaper as soon 
as the testimony was taken : and when his oppo- 



HE JOINS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 47 

nent rose to address the jury he would remark, 
"Are you going to sum up this case?" 

Roscoe Conkhng had always been a Whig in 
politics, but the disintegration of the old Whig 
party afforded him a means of escape from many 
perplexing political snags and more conservative 
doctrines. The Republican party was about to be 
formed and he saw in it an opening for men of 
progressive ideas and deep-seated convictions. 

The Whig State Convention met at Corinthian 
Hall, Syracuse, September 20, 1854. G. S. An- 
drews of Monroe was chosen president; and Ros- 
coe Conkling, representing Oneida, was one of 
the eight vice-presidents. 

In a brief address he said that having for nine 
years* attended Whig State Conventions, he had 
not in that time known a more harmonious meet- 
ing. He congratulated the party on " its present 
proud position." The Convention then adjourned 
sine die. 

Taking an active part in the canvass, Mr. Conk- 
ling at once became an original and energetic 
expounder of Republican principles. Young and 
aggressive in political life, he appeared to be 
eminently fitted for the transition period. 

Being a born leader of men, and possessing brill- 

*It will be remembered that he was but sixteen years of age when he 
began to attend State conventions. 



48 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

iant oratorical powers and a genius for organiza- 
tion, he turned these quahties to account in behalf 
of the harbingers of the new Republican party. 

Of the name " Republican " he was not then 
tenacious. It might be said that his motto was, 
*' Place our bark on the highest promontory of the 
beach, and wait for the rising of the tide to make 
it float."'''" 

At the November election Myron H. Clark and 
the Whig ticket were successful. The anti-slavery 
wings of the Whig and Democratic parties, as well 
as the Prohibitionists, united on IVIr. Clark, which 
enabled him to win at the polls by a small major- 
ity. He was really a " temperance " Whig. Some 
of his supporters in certain portions of the State 
adopted the name of "Republicans." He was suc- 
ceeded by John A. King, the first Republican Gov- 
ernor in the State. 

The Hon. D. E. Wager, of Rome, politely fur- 
nishes for publication the following reminiscence : 

The first civil trial of Mr. Conkling's that brought him 
prominently into notice, more than any former one, was that 
of Martha Parker by Guardian vs. Rev. F. A. Spencer. 

Both the parties resided at Hampton, in Westmoreland, in 
Oneida County, some eight miles from Rome. The real plaintiff 
was a young lady from eighteen to twenty years of age, who sang 
in the choir, and was a member of the Presbyterian Church in 

* This quotation from Lamartine concluded his famous speech on the 
Electoral Commission in January, 1877. 



THE CASE OF PARKER AGAINST SPENCER. 49 

that village. The defendant was pastor, and had been such 
since 1841. 

The action was slander. The actionable words were spoken in 
1852, and, in substance, charged the plaintiff with want of chas- 
tity. This trouble originated in the choir. Mr. Conkling appeared 
for the plaintiff, and with him was associated Mr. Francis Ker- 
nan, but it was Mr. Conkling's case. He examined the witnesses 
and summed up. The late Timothy Jenkins tried the case for 
the defendant. The trial was in Rome, in October, 1854, before 
Mr. Justice Bacon, and occupied the greater part of three days. 
I was present, and remember it about as well, though of course 
not in all the details, as if it were a week ago. The court-room 
was crowded each day, and the greatest interest and excitement 
were manifested, especially on the part of those who resided in 
Westmoreland or were acquainted with the parties. The de- 
fendant introduced evidence in justification, one of his witnesses 
being a young man who testified to taking liberties with the 
plaintiff. Mr. Jenkins occupied three hours and a half in sum- 
ming up for the defendant. Mr. Conkling took over two hours. 

This was a splendid opportunity for Mr. Conkling to display 
his eloquence and forensic skill, and he did it to great advantage, 
carrying his audience by storm. His speech was a masterpiece. 
The jury, after an absence of two hours, returned a verdict of 
$2,500 for the plaintiff. The audience in the court-house were 
so indignant at, and so wrought up against, the young man who 
had testified against the plaintiff that they attempted to mob him. 
To escape he had to be escorted to the hotel by lady friends; 
ran up the stairs of the hotel chased by the crowd, and got from 
an upper story into the back yard by being let down with a rope, 
from the third or fourth story window. The crowd then went 
into the street, built a bonfire, and burned him in effigy. Later 
they hung him in effigy from the top of a high pole which stood 
near the court-house. I remember well seeing it hang there the 
next day, and for two or three days thereafter. 

The defendant appealed to the general term, a new trial was 
granted, and the case was afterwards settled, as I heard, for 
$1,600. The plaintiff married and moved out V/est. The defend- 
ant died many years ago. 
4 



50 



LIFE' AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



In Mr. Conkling's garret, the biographer found 
the following reference to the slander suit of 
Parker versus Spencer. It is in his hand-writing 
and is thus indorsed : " Mem. written Nov. 1 1, '54, 
from recollection of scraps here and there in the 
summing up for plaintiff. — R. C." 

Gentlemen, have you daughters ? I have sisters, and I would 
rather follow their hearse, than that one of them should receive 
an injury so irreparable as that which has been inflicted by the 
defendant upon this orphan girl. 

I would rather the clods should fall upon their coffins than 
that one of them should be robbed of that priceless reputation, 
without which a woman is a casket without a jewel, a ship with- 
out a rudder, a helpless, hopeless wreck on Fortune's lonely shore. 

Have either of you a child whose mother died in its infancy, 
and whom you have watched with more than a father's care, the 
object of your hopes and your fears, your joys and your woes, 
which you lean upon as destined in your declining years to be a 
source of consolation and of comfort ? Have you such a child ? 
If you have, your lot and your hopes are just as Ephraim Park- 
er's were but two short years ago ! Struggling for bread in a far 
foreign land, in the midst of all his travels and his toil he was 
ever animated by the thought that he should yet be restored in 
peace to the home of his children, and the grave of their mother, 
and when, weary, he sank to rest with only the skies of heaven 
over him, he dreamed of the day when, with fortunes retrieved, 
he should return once more to the child he left behind him with 
nothing to sustain her but the blessing he invoked upon her head. 
And now the bright dreams of that father are gone forever: the 
damning whispers of the defendant have gone to California hiss- 
ing in his ears. 

******* 

What should I say of the act if committed by one absorbed in 
human matters, and pretending no higher standard of action than 
the honor and morals of the world ? I might say it was cruel 



A PATHETIC ADDRESS TO THE JURY. 5 I 

as the grave, I might say it was unpardonable, malignant, mean; 
but tell me, gentlemen, tell me what I shall say of it when 
perpetrated by one who professes to devote his life and his 
thoughts to learning and teaching that great rule of charity, of 
mercy and of love, whose seat is the bosom of the Almighty, and 
whose voice is the harmony of the world. How shall I describe 
the enormity of such a violation of the laws not only of man but 
of the King of kings by one who, when he thus bid defiance to 
reason and to right, must have heard, ought to have heard, the 
pleadings on Calvary, the warnings on the Mount of Olives, and 
the thunders of Mount Sinai still ringing in his ears. 

******* 

Do you remember an occurrence recorded in the New Testa- 
ment which happened in Galilee t 800 years ago, when the Scribes 
and Pharisees brought to our Saviour a woman taken in adultery? 
The crime was charged upon her, and it was said that she was 
taken in the very act. When called upon again and again to 
pronounce judgment upon her, what was the answer suggested 
by a divine compassion for the frailty of poor human nature ? 
" He that i.s without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at 
her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And 
they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, 
went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last; 
and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. 
When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, 
he said unto her. Woman, where are those thine accusers ? Hath 
no man condemned thee ? She said, No man, Lord ! And Jesus 
said unto her. Neither do I condemn thee : go and sin no more." 

This was the example of that first and greatest priest whose 
teachings the defendant has spent his whole life in professing — 
it was the example of Him who said, "Judge not, that ye be not 
judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: 
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you 
again." 

The narrative comes to us in that sacred record which declares, 
" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," and 
" For he shall have judgment without mercy that hath shewed no 
mercy." 



52 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

This extract from Mr. Conkling's address is the 
earHest record of the kind that the biographer has 
found. The reader may observe his pathetic 
appeal to the jury and his fondness for scriptural 
quotation. In later speeches and arguments he 
often referred to the l3ible. 

Of Mr. Conkling's early career, Samuel Earl, of 
Herkimer, says : 

I became acquainted with the Hon. Roscoe Conkling soon 
after his admission to the bar. He at once went to the front 
and took rank with the foremost lawyers in Central New York. 
Few men rose as rapidly as he did in the profession, and his ser- 
vices were sought for in nearly all of the important cases which 
were tried in Oneida and the adjoining counties, from the time of 
his entrance to the bar to the time he was made United States 
Senator. I can speak of him only in a general way, except so 
far as this county is concerned, and here I often met him on the 
circuit, either as counsel in cases in which I was engaged, or in 
which he was the counsel upon the opposite side. It was always 
deemed an important point gained for a litigant to secure Conk- 
ling's services in his case. Clients and attorneys felt safe if 
Conkling was on their side — such, indeed, were my feelings if I 
had him as counsel associated with me; and then, too, if he was 
the counsel opposed to me I felt that there was trouble ahead. 
He was the most industrious lawyer I ever knew. He studied 
his cases as but few lawyers do, and he never sat down to the 
trial of a case without a full knowledge of the facts, well briefed 
up, and I have never known him to be taken by surprise, either 
upon the facts or the law of his case. 

He had a powerful influence over the juries in this county, and 
it often seemed to me he won cases that he ought to have lost. 
Such able jury lawyers as Joshua A. Spencer could not check 
his triumphs or prevent victories where, as against other coun- 
sel, Spencer would have been victorious. I remember one case 
in particular, in which Sanford Snell, a cheese buyer, sued his 



REMINISCENCES B Y SAMUEL EARL. 



53 



uncle, Suffrenus Snell, for slander. The words related to San- 
ford's dealings as a cheese buyer, which the old man did not 
think quite honest, and he took the liberty to speak of them, and 
to characterize them as they seemed to his honest mind. San- 
ford sued for slander, employing Conklingto prosecute the suit. 
The old man retained Joshua A. Spencer. The case came on 
for trial at one of the circuits in this county sometime about 
1855, and it attracted considerable mterest from the fact that 
two such able advocates as Spencer and Conkling were in the 
case, and that it was a suit by a nephew of rather unsavory repu- 
tation against his uncle, an honest old farmer. The sympathies 
of the people of his town were all on the side of the old man, 
and Spencer exerted all his great powers to save his client from 
being mulcted in damages in a suit which he denounced as unjust, 
and as being brought by young Snell from unworthy motives. 
But Conkling, young as he then was, was more than a match for 
the supposed matchless power of the great advocate, Joshua A. 
Spencer, and he won for his client a verdict of $1,000 damages, 
which the old man paid. The result in this case was that Conk- 
ling, and not Spencer, was considered at the Herkimer bar the 
greatest advocate and the most formidable opponent upon the 
trial of a case before a jury. A lawyer in this county by the name 
of Marsh was sued for slander by a female, who alleged that her 
character for chastity had been assailed. Special damages, as 
the law then stood, had to be alleged and proved in order to sus- 
tain the action. Marsh retained Francis Kernan and Roscoe 
Conkling to defend him, and I thought at the time that they 
undertook the defence out of sympathy for Marsh, who was com- 
paratively poor, and almost friendless. Upon the trial of the 
case the duty of examining and of cross-examining the witnesses 
fell to Kernan. To prove the special damages, a tailor by the 
name of Dodge was called in behalf of the plaintiff, who testified 
that after hearing of the charges of unchastity imputed to her he 
forbade her to come to his house. Upon his cross-examination he 
was severely handled by Mr. Kernan, who made it appear quite 
clearly that his testimony was fixed up for the occasion, and that 
he was unworthy of belief. Conkling's part in the case was to 
sum it up to the jury; and he did it in his usual masterly way. 



54 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE COA'K'LING.. 

What little was left of the witness Dodge upon his cross-exami- 
nation by Keroan was completely demolished by Conkling. 

The result was a six cents' verdict, and Conkling added new 
laurels to his fame as a jury lawyer in this county. 

I once brought an action against a young man for breach of 
promise of marriage, and Conkling was retained to defend. Such 
was his reputation that when my client heard he was retained 
she fainted. The defendant paid $i,ooo, and thus settled the 
case. 

My memory now extends back over forty years, in which time 
I have witnessed nearly all the important trials in this county, 
and in that time none superior to Conkling ever appeared before 
a Herkimer County jury. 

Mr. Conkling- now^ associated himself with 
Montgomery H. Throop, a nephew of ex-Gov- 
ernor Enos T. Throop and also of the late Justice 
Ward Hunt, then a young and able lawyer. Mr. 
Throop had been one of Mr. Conkling's school- 
mates at Auburn. He threw himself heart and 
soul into the practice of his profession. Brilliant 
success crowned the efforts of the new firm, and 
their labors aided in sustaining the reputation of 
the famous Oneida County bar. During this 
period Mr. Conkling lost few cases. He was a 
painstaking practitioner and the happiest moments 
of his life were when the client appreciated his 
professional services. 

The firm of Conkling & Throop existed from 
1855 to 1862. In those days it was customary for 
lawyers to advertise in the newspapers. An ex- 
amination of the files of the Utica Observer and 



MJi. CONKLING'S MARRIAGE. 



55 



Herald proves that this firm inserted a standing 
advertisement in the columns of these journals. 
Montgomery H. Throop, the author of the New- 
York annotated code, now^ of Albany, w^as the 
office lawyer, and Roscoe Conklingr acted as advo- 
cate. The former usually argued on appeal cases 
in which the latter had appeared at circuit. 

We have seen that Mr. Conkling tried causes 
at Rome and at Herkimer. He was frequently 
retained to defend clients in civil as well as crimi- 
nal suits in the latter place. 

On the twenty-fifth day of June, 1S55, Roscoe 
Conkling married Julia, daughter of Henry Sey- 
mour, a man of high social standing and influence 
at Utica. She was also a sister of the Hon. Horatio 
Seymour, who had just finished his first term of 
service as Governor of New York. Their wed- 
ding-trip was made to Auburn, and a week was 
passed at Judge Conkling's stately residence. At 
the same time a family re-union took place. Mrs. 
S. Hanson Coxe and Frederick A. Conkling, the 
sister and brother of the groom, with their chil- 
dren, were present. Outdoor games were played 
upon the spacious lawn, and Mr. Conkling en- 
gaged in the sport with his little nieces and neph- 
ews. Although but five years of age, the author 
w^ell remembers the occasion and his first impres- 
sions of his aunt and uncle. 



56 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The firm of Conkling" & Throop had a large 
practice. The former hesitated to undertake more 
than three or four criminal causes during the year 
lest he should be named a criminal lawyer. Mr. 
Conkling took no part in politics during this 
period. The next year (1856) was eventful for 
the Republicans. Their national convention met 
at Philadelphia, June 17, and nominated on the 
first formal ballot John C. Fremont, of California, 
the " Pathfinder," and William L. Dayton, of New 
Jersey. 

In the same month, James Buchanan, of Penn- 
sylvania, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, 
were named in the Cincinnati convention as 
the Presidential candidates of the Democratic 
party. 

Mr. Conklinor attended a ratification meetinof in 
Utica, June 25, at which, as chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Resolutions, he drew and read, among 
others, the following resolution, that is here re- 
corded to illustrate the emphatic manner in which 
he committed himself during the infancy of the 
new party : 

Resolved, That the [Republican] nominee for the Presidency 
possesses many unusual qualifications for the exalted station to 
which he is likely to be called, that his history abounds in proofs 
of talent, bravery and truth, and that we are quite content to see 
the first ofifice in the Republic committed to the hands of John 
Charles Fremont. 



A REPUBLICAN GOVERxYOR IS ELECTED. 



57 



He made many speeches throag-hout the counties 
of Oneida and Herkimer during August, Septem- 
ber and October. He addressed 3,000 men at 
Trenton, August 27, and he spoke, November 3, 
before the Fremont Club, of Rome. For the pre- 
vious week his speech was daily announced in the 
Utica Herald. 

At that time orators were rarely reported. The 
biographer has seen no public record of Roscoe 
Conkling's speeches nor found any manuscript 
addresses among his private papers. It is safe to 
assume that by this time " the young man 
eloquent," as he was called, ceased to write out 
his speeches."^" In after life he usually spoke from 
head notes on slips of paper ; and when he be- 
came a Senator he wrote his memoranda on long 
envelopes. 

The election took place November 4, and the 
Republicans were defeated in the nation, but car- 
ried the Empire State for President and Governor. 
Fremont and Dayton had a majority of about 
81,000, and John A. King had nearly as large a 
vote over Erastus Brooks for the office of Gov- 
ernor. It may be added that Mr. Conkling's "Free- 
soilism " led him zealously to support General 
Fremont. In this cause he devoted as much time 



* During the campaign his brother, Aurelian Conkling, "stumped" 
in Central New York. 



58 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLINC. 

to speechifying as his jealous mistress, the law, 
would permit. 

Mr. Conkling- was one of the members of the 
bar appointed by the court to examine the grad- 
uates of the law school of Hamilton College for 
admission to practice in the year 1856. 

Professor Theodore W. Dwight states : 

Although but twenty-seven years of age, Roscoe Conkling 
was then a power at the bar of Central New York. The defend- 
ants were usually afraid of him and often settled suits at law 
brought by him and about to be tried before a jury. 

On the twenty-fifth day of April, 1857, Joshua 
A. Spencer died, aged sixty-six. Two days after- 
ward a meeting of the Oneida bar was held at 
the court-house in Utica. Roscoe Conkling was 
chosen secretary, and many members of the pro- 
fession made memorial speeches. 

It is to be regretted that no biography of Mr. 
Spencer was written. Although rarely arguing 
cases in the Court of Appeals, he was probably 
the ablest advocate and best-known jury lawyer 
in New York. Mr. Kernan stated that with two 
exceptions he tried cases in every county of the 
State. Roscoe Conkling was sincerely attached 
to Mr. Spencer, and we have seen that they op- 
posed each other in a few nisi pr his cases. 

It is said in Central New York that Mr. Conk- 
ling was the first lawyer to receive compensation 



THE TRIAL OFCLARINDA YOURDAN. 59 

above the usual rates at that time. Joshua A. 
Spencer, who for many years had been leading 
counsel at the circuits, made small charges for his 
services — $25, $50, and in extreme cases $75, for 
the trial. Mr. Conkling soon charged $100 and 
upward. 

The nineteenth day of September, 1857, one 
Clarinda Vourdan was indicted for poisoning her 
husband. She was called the "Borgia" of the 
northern part of the county. Roscoe Conkling 
and Ward Hunt were retained to defend her. 
J. H. Minger was then District-Attorney, and the 
Attorney-General of the State assigned Rufus W. 
Peckham to assist him. The case came on soon 
afterward at the Oneida Circuit before Judge W. 
F. Allen. For a private reason an effort was made 
by Mr. Conkling to postpone the case — at least to 
get it away from Judge Allen. Several motions 
were made and denied. Mr. Peckham being at 
Utica, the struggle to continue the case was hope- 
less, and the court ruled that the prisoner must be 
tried. The Judge then told the clerk to empanel 
a jury, whereupon Mr. Conkling threw down his 
papers, and retreating, sat down in one of the 
jurors' seats and said : " If there is to be a judicial 
murder, I wish to wash my hands of it." His asso- 
ciate, Ward Hunt, also withdrew from the case. 
Judge Allen then said that if counsel threw up their 



6o LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

briefs that was no reason for adjourning the trial. 
He then assigned ex-Judges Samuel Beardsley and 
Philo Gridley. These advocates were allowed one 
day to prepare the case. On the morrow they 
entered court and read a brief affidavit stating that, 
not having had enough time for proper preparation, 
they were unable to proceed. The cause was then 
marked off for the term. During the year 1858 
Clarinda Yourdan was tried. Ward Hunt re- 
entered the case, but Mr. Conkling, being mayor 
of the city, did not wish to appear. After a long 
trial, in which crowds packed the court-house to 
hear how Mrs. Yourdan'^" answered her husband's 
cries for relief by administering soothing doses 
of poison, she was convicted of murder and sen- 
tenced to prison for life. 

One of the traditions of the Oneida bar is that 
Roscoe Conkling had now become so formidable 
as an advocate that some of the lawyers in the 
county advised their clients to retain him in im- 
portant cases, for the purpose of keeping him from 
the service of the other side. 

*She said to her counsel : " I put ' pison ' on his bread, and if he'd a 
mind to eat it, why, that ain't none of my business." 



I858-I859. 

CHAPTER V. 

MR. CONKLING AS MAYOR. 

'' I "HE year 1858 was, for the subject of this 
biography, an eventful one. It was a pivot 
in his poUtical Hfe. For seven years, excepting 
an effort to be nominated as attorney-general in 
the autumn of 1853, he neither sought nor accept- 
ed public office. 

In the year 1858 he carried his city as mayor, 
and his county for representative in Congress. 
An available candidate was more than desired by 
the Republicans. The city of Utica had been 
Democratic by a small majority. In a search for 
a suitable man the name of Roscoe Conkling was 
suggested. His reputation as an advocate and a 
politician in the best sense made him the " com- 
ing man " of Oneida County. 

Although competent judges then considered 
Mr. Conkling a forcible illustration of the possi- 
bilities of the law, and although his name is found 
in the books as a successful advocate in a great 
variety of civil and criminal suits, his critics in 

6i 



62 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONK LING. 

distant parts of the State, as well as of the re- 
public, have spoken of him as a politician rather 
than a lawyer. Hence his biographer should at- 
tempt to correct this erroneous impression. Be- 
fore the close of this volume a chapter on " Mr. 
Conkling's legal life " will be written, in which 
we shall give the opinions of the late Chief- 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 
and of associate justices of that court, of some of 
the judges of the Court of Appeals and of the 
Supreme Court of New York, as well as the im- 
pressions of leading lawyers, to the effect that the 
subject of this biography was one of the ablest 
advocates of his time. 

It should be stated, however, that Roscoe 
Conkling was a good judge of human nature, 
and a born leader of men. These qualities, added 
to his vigorous forensic oratory, made him a for- 
midable man in the political arena. 

He did not make a trade of politics, but he was 
one who did everything with all his might. His 
attributes can best be described by an extract 
from one of his campaign speeches made in i8So : 

"If any Church is worth belonging to, it is 
worth belonging to not a little. The great Book 
says: 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
with thy might.' That is as true in politics as in 
relicrion." 



HE IS NOMINA TED EOR MA YOR. 6^ 

Whenever he engaged in poUtical work he 
threw his heart and soul into it, and thus dis- 
played a degree of facility and skill in town and 
county matters which gave him reputation as a 
manager. Yet he clung to the truth and always 
avoided treachery. He never "sold out" his 
friends, and in subsequent pages this trait will be 
illustrated by several examples. Thus much for 
this apparent digression concerning Mr. Conk- 
ling's career as a lawyer and partisan. 

In the year 1858 the Republican party of the 
city of Utica found itself in imperative need of 
an available candidate for mayor. The chances 
of defeat at that time, and the unpleasant duties 
of the office, created in the minds of many mem- 
bers of the party an unconquerable repugnance 
to consenting to a nomination. Mr. Conkling, 
among others, had emphatically refused to be 
placed on the ticket ; but the Republican City 
Convention met February 25, 1858, and nominated 
him on the first formal ballot. He received 
twenty-eight votes and his one opponent, Samuel 
Farwell, seven. The former was then unani- 
mously nominated. A committee was appointed 
to notify the candidate. They went to Mr. Conk- 
ling's house in Whitesboro Street, and were told 
that he was at Oswego trying a law-suit. On 
the following day a committee of citizens, of 



64 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

whom some were Democrats, visited him to urge 
his acceptance. One of the number said, " You 
will surely be elected, and then we shall send you 
to Congress." Here was a case of the " office seek- 
ing the man, not the man the office." Mr. Conk- 
ling hesitated, and then declined the honor ; but 
his visitors insisted, and finally he promised to 
consider the subject and to give an early answer. 

On the next day he wrote to his political friends 
protesting that his private interests would suffer. 
The yearly salary of the office then was but two 
hundred and fifty dollars, and his professional in- 
come was to him a matter of great importance. 

To yield to the wishes of those who had 
proffered the nomination was therefore a greater 
sacrifice to him than would have been involved in 
the case of almost any other citizen. A man of 
small property, depending upon an arduous pro- 
fession which required unremitting attention, he 
was thus called upon to conduct a canvass then 
thought to be hopeless, and, if successful, to 
assume the position of mayor and chief almoner 
of the city in a year teeming beyond precedent 
with poverty and distress. 

The inauguration of the new mayor took place 
Tuesday, March 9. Upon taking the chair Mayor 
Conkling addressed the council in substance as 
follows : 



THE MA YOR'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 65 

Gentlemen of the Common Council : By its charter, and the 
other laws of the State creating and controlling it, the city of 
Utica is a corporation invested with certain franchises, rights and 
powers, and curbed by certain limitations and restrictions. It is 
composed legally of the inhabitants within its limits, for in one 
sense every elector may be termed a member of the corporation, 
and every taxpayer may be regarded as a stockholder and owner. 
Thus existing and thus composed, it possesses in common with 
most other corporations the privilege of electing by the votes of 
its members its own directors and trustees. This privilege has 
just been exercised, and we have been called here to occupy such 
seats at the board of directors as the expiration of the official 
year has rendered vacant. 

******* 

To study and comprehend the varied interests of a populous 
and increasing city, to regulate its police, to minister to the con- 
venience, the comfort, and the safety of its inhabitants without 
the slightest partiality or distinction of party or class, to scrutinize 
and reduce expenditures, to instil frugality and rigid honesty 
into every branch of municipal affairs, to multiply the blessings 
and diminish the curses of civilized society, these, gentlemen, 
belong to the task, these are some of the duties, a few of the re- 
sponsibilities, which now await us ; responsibilities which we can 
scarcely affirm have been forced upon us, but which we have, ' 
rather voluntarily assumed, and which, therefore, in their very 
nature not only, but in the manner in which they have been un- 
dertaken, bind us to square our conduct by the rule of the most 
rigid accountability. * * * 

The country is just emerging from a period of unexampled 
disaster and gloom ; a period which has passed like an eclipse 
over the whole commercial world. Our own city especially has, 
from local as well as general causes, been visited with great 
calamity. * '" * 

With resources thus paralyzed and burdens thus increased, 
taxpayers have a right to expect that we shall at least join in that 
work of retrenchment which is going on in the houses of our 
citizens and in the expenditures of private life. 

******* 



66 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CO NIC LING. 

" Fidelity, and even common honesty, in public servants may 
become conspicuous perhaps in the affairs of a city when some of 
the chief officers of the nation are using the forms of govern- 
ment for purposes of oppression and of wrong, and when in one 
portion of our country men — not black men, but white men — are 
gasping for freedom, because servants are greater than their mas- 
ters, and because those whom the people honored with their con- 
fidence have turned traitors to the trust. In conclusion, gentle- 
men, let me cherish the belief that for all errors and insufficien- 
cies in me, our constituents will be more than compensated by 
fidelity and capabilities in you, and that so long as we preserve 
our motives unspotted, we shall enjoy the approval of our own 
consciences at least, whatever shall be the verdict which others 
may pronounce." 

Mayor Conkling's official duties, added to his 
large legal practice, were wearisome and onerous. 
As a diversion he would walk with friends to the 
neighboring hills. His favorite "pedestrian" 
companions were Dr. L. W. Rodgers, Erastus 
Clark and William Blakie. The last named has 
since spoken of these walking-trips to the author 
with the remark, " Oh, what a walker and climber 
your uncle once was! we could hardly keep up 
with him." It may be said that his athletic habits 
were the secret of his great capacity for work. 
While never making a " record" In any outdoor 
sport, Roscoe Conkling's rule to secure sufficient 
fresh air and exercise enabled him to devote daily 
from ten to fourteen hours to severe mental ex- 
ertion. After resigning from the Senate, when he 
was no longer youthful enough to engage actively 



HIS LOVE OF ATHLETIC SPORTS. 



67 



in outdoor sports, he oftentimes attended athletic 
exhibitions, and became a member and o-overnor 
of the New York Athletic Club. Down to the 
close of his life he had but one serious illness, i. e., 
in the fall of 1876, when he suffered from weak 
eyes and malaria contracted in the unhealthy at- 
mosphere of Washington. 

The city of Utica was illuminated August 6, 
1858, in honor of the great event of laying the 
Atlantic telegraph cable. There was a grand dis- 
play of fireworks. At the public exercises the 
Hon. Thomas R. Walker made the opening 
speech. He was followed by Mayor Conkling, 
who delivered an eloquent address. 

The following report of the mayor's speech is 
taken from the Central hidependent of August 13, 
1858. The editor states that it is made up " from 
the reports in the Herald and the Observer, and 
with the assistance of friends who heard it." The 
biographer publishes the speech to show how the 
writer loved picturesque illustrations and histori- 
cal references. We may add that in later years 
Mr. Conkling would probably not have delivered 
a similar address without some quotation from 
the Bible or from Shakespeare. 

We have assembled to commemorate a great event, to cele- 
brate a most brilliant victory. Not a victory crowning a success- 
ful war, not a victory whose heroes waded through seas of slaugh- 



68 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONK LING. 

ter and of blood ; not a victory which has left the l)ones of brave 
men to bleach upon a field of battle and their widows and orphans 
to mourn that we might rejoice ; but a stainless victory of science 
and of peace — a victory which leaves no pang and no crime be- 
hind it and which yet fills the world with its renown and covers 
its heroes with a lustre which will never fade away. 

History is filled with great occurrences of which the ocean has 
been the theatre. Navies have ridden out to battle on the sea, 
and the world has held its breath to hear their fate, and nations 
have shuddered at the tale. So ships have drifted where " the 
breakers talked with death," and have gone down and left a 
thousand breaking hearts to sorrow for the loved ones and the 
lost. But ships this day have anchored from a voyage which will 
be famous when Trafalgar is not remembered and when the ill- 
fated Presidetit and Arctic have perished from the list of remem- 
bered wrecks. 

Only twice in naval annals has a vessel floated on the ocean 
whose story will be told so long and heard so far as that of the 
fleet which laid down the cable between the Old World and the 
New. 

More than three hundred years ago, a sailor of Genoa weighed 
the anchor of the Santa Maria, and hoisted her sails. She was 
a little boat, but she carried a mighty enterprise. She was only 
a chip, but she floated a thought. She was bound upon a daring 
errand, but she was guided by a master hand. She sailed to 
make a dread experiment, but she was held on her course by the 
genius, the enthusiasm and the hope of man. She rode among 
the trackless surges till she cast her anchor on a western beach, 
and Columbus stepped from her deck upon the shore of a conti- 
nent he may be said almost to have created. 

In later times when oppression ruled the hour and liberty could 
not be found at home, the little Mayflower struck bravely out for 
freedom and swam to Plymouth Rock. There with the spark she 
had kept alive a fire was kindled which will burn as long as the 
billows roar and break. 

These twin achievements stand out alone in the history of the 
sea, unfellowed in the proof they give of the heroism and stead- 
fastness of man. But this day a miracle is wrought which in 



AN ADDRESS ON THE A TLANTIC CABLE. 69 

genius and in wonder is greatest of its kind. The Santa Maria 
gave the world a continent ; the Mayflower carried and planted 
in it the seeds which have made it blossom as the rose ; but the 
Niagara and her sister ships have built a bridge from world to 
world on which hourly Christendom may cross. 

That is a great wedding-day when hemispheres are married 
and lightning is the language in which they are betrothed. It is 
a joyful holiday for the nations, a proud holiday for New York, 
In surveying this wondrous achievement, we as citizens may in- 
dulge in a little local pride. He who first set the magnetic tele- 
graph in motion is a citizen of this State, and on the green banks 
of the Hudson he enjoys the honors and the wealth to which his 
genius has entitled him. So too is he a son of New York who 
has borne a foremost part in this last and greatest act in the 
drama of science. When necessity demanded, he staked his 
fortune on the hazard of the die — he measured his endeavor not 
by the bright and expectant hour, but he persevered after hope 
had yielded to despair ; he saw success with that inner eye which 
no calamity could darken ; with a ready hand he cast his bread 
upon the waters and it has returned to him after many days. If 
failure and loss had happened, who would have remembered or 
honored him ? but now that day has dawned upon him, we have 
time to pause and think that to New York belongs the name of 
Cyrus W, Field. 

But whether to this locality or to that, to this individual or to 
that, shall be ascribed the glory of the work that's done — these 
are paltry questions — things which are belittled by considerations 
reaching all mankind. Let us, rather, turn to the stake which in- 
telligence and freedom and labor have in this great consum- 
mation, to the consequences of wealth, of happiness, of prosper- 
ity and peace destined to flow from such a fountain. See the im- 
mensity of the undertaking, think of the magnitude of its suc- 
cess, consider its effects upon the world, behold how wonderful a 
thing it is, whether you regard it in the prismatic colors of fancy 
or through the dry spectacles of fact. 

To-morrow friends who stand around me may send home words 
of remembrance and of love, and in an hour receive returning 
tidings from those they left behind them in the green island of 



70 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the sea. The sons of Germany may send their greetings to the 
fatherland and in a moment greetings will echo back from the 
Danube to the Rhine. 

We have henceforth another inducement to hold out to the 
children of other climes as they come to seek the places which 
are waiting to receive them. When they turn their backs upon 
the fraternal roof and the last look has been given they will be 
cheered by the thought that, when they touch our shores, in that 
same hour a spark will snap out of the waves of the sea and fall 
on the hearthstone at home, there to kindle a blaze of joy and 
to flash back the welcome signal that all is well. 

Of the influence to be exerted upon commerce, upon the busi- 
ness and politics of Christendom, this is not the place to speak. 
Suffice it to say that every interest and every man in all this broad 
republic is in some way a gainer by this greatest exploit of the 
age. To all parts of our country it is a harbinger of blessing 
and of greatness and especially to New York is it an increase 
and a dower, for it tends to strengthen her and adorn her more 
and more as she sits upon the brow of the western continent, 
queen in the diadem of States. 

Such demonstrations as this have a high office to do. They 
help to eke out just rewards to industry and virtue ; they stretch 
out a helping hand to enterprise and genius ; they do homage 
not to the destroyers but to the benefactors of mankind. No 
great truth was ever yet born unto the world without great pangs 
to him who gave it birth — from Galileo to Columbus, and from 
Columbus to the humblest of inventors and discoverers, derision 
and discouragement have tracked the steps of genius and strewn 
obstacles in its way. It is our privilege this evening to do justice 
to those whose indomitable perseverance has conferred enduring 
benefit upon the human race. To those our gratitude is ever due 
whose deeds redound to the welfare of our country, who help to 
swell the multitude of good gifts which have made America an asy- 
lum for the down-trodden and oppressed of every clime and earned 
her the title of the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

In the spring election of the following- year 
(1859) the vote for mayor resulted in a tie be- 



HIS SECOND TERM AS MA YOR. 7 1 

tween John C. Hoyt (Republican) and Charles S. 
Wilson, who in the previous year was defeated 
by Mr. Conkling. An attempt was made, how- 
ever, by certain persons whose duty it was to can- 
vass the returns, to change by subsequent cipher- 
ing, the footings as they were legally made. If 
neither candidate were elected, the incumbent 
would continue in office, and therefore, deeming 
himself interested, Mr. Conkling refrained from 
voting or acting upon the returns. The residue 
of the council, however, decided that no choice 
had been made by the people, and thus, without 
any participation of his own, the mayor found 
himself still associated with his official obliga- 
tions. Mr. Conkling remained in office until the 
latter part of the year (1859), when he resigned 
his position as mayor to take the seat in Congress 
to which he had been elected. 

Here follows his letter of resignation : 

To THE Common Council of the City of Utica: 

Gentlemen— i:\i^ last charter election having resulted in no 
choice for the office of mayor, the law continued me in that 
position for another year. 

My personal and professional interests demanded my prompt 
resignation and it did not occur to me that by postponing it I 
could in any way promote the general good. There were those, 
however, of all parties who maintained that my stay in office, in 
the then situation of our municipal affairs, was called for by a 
due regard for the public welfare. This consideration was ur- 
gently pressed upon me by men to whose wisdom and expe- 



72 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

rience I felt compelled to yield. I have, therefore, acted as 
mayor till now, when other duties call m-e for a long period from 
home. No one can doubt the propriety of my resignation, at this 
time, of the post to which the voice of my fellow-citizens origi- 
nally called me and the honor of which I gratefully appreciate. 

To you, individually, 1 tender my best wishes for your pros- 
perity. For all of courtesy I have received at your hands, accept 
my thanks ; for my own shortcomings, I ask your charity. 

I hereby resign the office of mayor, and leave you with the 
hope that your future action may in all things redound to the 
honor and prosperity of the city. 

Your obedient servant, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

Utica, Nov. 1 8, 1859. 

During Mayor Conkling's second term nothing 
of especial public interest occurred. He tried 
many causes at the Oneida and Herkimer Circuits. 
Among the suits at the latter were the Win field 
breach of promise case, where he recovered a ver- 
dict of $2,300, and the memorable case of Bellin- 
ger vs. Craigue. 

This was an action for malpractice against a 
physician, for alleged lack of skill in setting the 
broken leg of the plaintiff's wife. Messrs. Conk- 
ling and Throop had been substituted for a law- 
yer from Little Falls. There was a very able and 
vigorous defence on the facts as well as on the 
law by George A. Hardin, afterward (1889) a 
judge of the Supreme Court. Yet Roscoe Conk- 
ling, by his skill in the examination of the 
witnesses, added to his stirring " summing up," 



HE WINS A SUIT FOR MALPRACTICE. >JT^ 

gained a verdict of nine hundred dollars, which 
was then, in such suits, a large sum to recover. 

In his second official year Mayor Conkling may 
be said to have been passive in politics. During 
the Republican County Convention which met in 
Utica. October 4, 1859, he was noi a delegate; but, 
being a spectator at the rear of the hall, after the 
nominations had been made, in response to loud 
calls of " Conkling ! Conkling !" he spoke briefly 
and assailed the administration of President Bu- 
chanan. 



August, 1858 — April, 1859. 
CHAPTER VI. 

HE IS ELECTED TO CONGRESS UNPUBLISHED CORRE- 
SPONDENCE BETWEEN MR. CONKLING, AND THOMAS 
CORWIN, OF OHIO. 

TT will be remembered that when in February, 
1858, a committee of citizens offered Mr. 
Conkling the nomination for mayor, one of the 
party said, " We shall send you to Congress." A 
fortnight later the Rome Daily Sentinel of March 
16 announced that " the election of Mayor Conk- 
ling settles the question that he will be the next 
nominee of the Republicans for Congress." His 
name was afterward suggested by the Utica 
Evening Telegraph of June 18. While no par- 
ticular candidate was endorsed during the sum- 
mer several gentlemen who had been mayors of 
Utica were named for Congressional honors. 

The following letter from ex-Governor Clark 
explains itself : 

New York, August 9, 1858. 
Hon. RoscoE Conkling, Utica : 

My Dear Sir: I am pleased to learn, as I have from many 
quarters, that you will doubtless receive the nomination at the 



A LETTER FROM EX-GOVERNOR CLARK. 75 

Republican convention of Oneida County for Congress. I trust 
you will consent to be a candidate, and if so, I doubt not you 
will be triumphantly elected. While I do not wish to flatter you, 
I still beg to say that if every district in our State could be as 
honorably, ably and truly represented as Oneida would be in your 
election, it would certainly be gratifying to every true Republican 
in the State and nation, and especially to your ob't servant, 

Myron H. Clark. 

Orsamus B. Matteson had been, for the last ten 
years, the Whig nominee for Congress in Oneida 
County. He was now under a cloud and many 
of his supporters thought it was time for him to 
retire from politics. The Republican press of the 
county as well as of the city of New York opposed 
his renomination. 

Mr. Conkling was the man to whom discon- 
tented Republicans turned as the only candidate 
that could defeat Mr. Matteson. At first Mr. 
Conkling refused to allow his name to be used, 
but his political friends would not take " no " for 
a reply. A companion of his youth, who was 
now practicing law in the city of New York, was 
asked to come to Utica to try to persuade Mr. 
Conkling to accept the nomination. Acting upon 
this recjuest, the former visited the latter and 
had an interview of several hours' duration. Mr. 
Conkling feared that he could not be nominated 
and that he would be defeated if he became a 
candidate. In refutation of this timidity, his New 



76 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONIsTLLVG. 

York friend promised him the delegations of all 
of the northern towns, and urged the strong senti- 
ment of opposition to Matteson* throughout the 
county. The result was that he promised to per- 
mit the use of his name. In after life he often 
spoke of the folly of " allowing yourself to be 
nominated for an office when you have no chance 
of election." We have thus gone into details to 
show that Mr. Conkling never sought this Con- 
gressional nomination. He afterward regretted 
its acceptance, for he often said, " I should have 
made my fortune before entering Congress." 

Upon completion of half of his term as mayor, 
he weighed carefully the question of continuing 
in political life. In discussing the subject with 
his wife, he said, " I love my profession and I 
doubt if I would like anything better." It was a 
difficult problem to solve — between law and poli- 
tics — but at the suggestion of warm personal 
friends he consented, as already stated, to be- 
come a Congressional candidate. When asked, 
" Why do you want to go to Congress ?" he 
replied, " Because some men object to my nomi- 
nation. So long as one man in the city opposes 
me, I shall run on the Republican ticket." This 

• Referring to this gentleman, the newspapers of Oneida published the 
following couplet : 

" By all true patriots be it understood, 
He left his party for his party's good." 



A FIGHT D URING THE TRIMAR V ELECTIONS. 



77 



aggressive spirit characterized his later pubhc Ufe. 
His love of combat was unique. Without being 
spiteful, he sometimes seemed to fight for the 
sake of fighting. 

The cowardly assault of Preston S. Brooks upon 
Charles Sumner at Washington in 1856 was still 
fresh in the public mind. Benjamin Allen, who 
was president of the Fifth Ward Association, of 
the city of Utica, apropos of the Sumner-Brooks 
incident said : " Boys, we must now nominate 
muscle as well as brains for Congress. Let us 
send Conkling; I guess they won't hurt him!" On 
the fourth of September, 1858, the Republicans 
held their primary meetings throughout the city. 
An unusual degree of interest was shown in the 
occasion. The Congressional contest in the several 
wards was between Roscoe Conkling and Charles 
H. Doolittle, except in the first ward, where both 
" delegate " candidates favored the former. The 
result showed that Mr. Conkling received more 
than double the number of votes cast for Mr. 
Doolittle. The Conkling delegates were chosen 
in all the wards excepting the fourth, wherein 
Mr. Doolittle resided. In the fifth ward, while 
the balloting was in progress, a gang of ruffians 
who favored the anti-Conklincr deleofates rushed 
(waving their pistols) into the polling-place and 
seized the ballot-box. It was then cast into the 



78 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

street, broken in pieces and the tickets scattered 
over the pavement. The officers of the primary 
at once gathered up the votes and, after making 
a canvass of them, found that Charles H. Hop- 
kins, the Conkhng delegate, had a large majority. 
The Republican County Convention"^'' met at 
Rome, September 21. There were two candidates 
for the office of member of Congress. On the first 
ballot Roscoe Conkling received sixty-two votes, 
while Charles H. Doolittle obtained but twenty- 
three. When the Committee on Resolutions re- 
ported, the following reference to Mr. Conkling 
was made. 

^^ Resolved, That this convention presents, v/ith pride and con- 
fidence, the name of Roscoe Conkling as the Republican candi- 
date for Congress ; pride in his zealous and constant devotion 
to free principles, in his brilliant and practical talents, shining 
equally as a public speaker and a clear-headed and energetic 
business man, and in his spotless and chivalric character; and 
confidence that the electors of the country will give him a gener- 
ous and enthusiastic support, which will be rewarded by a Con- 
gressional career that shall embody the principles, conduce to 
the interests, and magnify the influence and reputation of the 
Republicans of Oneida." 

In response to an invitation, Mr. Conkling 
entered the hall and addressed the Convention at 
some length. A brief extract from his speech 
follows : 

* One of the delegates was Peter B. Crandall, of Bridgewater, who 
will again appear in the Haddock court-martial. In 1865 he became pro- 
vost-marshal at Utica.and proved a useful friend to Mr. Conkling, 



AN ADDRESS TO THE COUNTY CONVENTION. 79 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: 

* * * To study the varied interests of a hundred thousand 
freemen; to advance the truths we call Republicanism against 
the alliance of patronage and power, of slavery and wrong; to 
prove a worthy soldier in the great battle of Freedom, of Equality 
and Right — these are in part the duties for which you bid me 
prepare. Such is the task which you have set before me. I ac- 
cept it [Applause], and in doing so, I leave with you the pledge 
that the honor of the country shall never be tarnished in my 
keeping and that no Republican shall find cause to grieve for the 
vote he may cast for me. [Applause.] 

The nomination you have bestowed upon me is the offspring 
of a contest full of endeavor and heated animation. I have been 
borne forward upon the arms of friends too steadfast and too 
generous ever to be forgotten; while those who have competed 
for the honors of this convention have been sustained with a zeal 
and an effort hardly less devoted. All this is well — well for the 
party — well for good results. There are, however, considerations 
connected with it upon which from the outset I have looked with 
deep regret. Harsh words have been spoken and published and 
things said in too great excess, by Republicans, one of another. 
For my own part I have written not a word which has been printed 
in the canvass, but if any hasty expression has crossed the lips 
of any friend of mine, or fallen from my own, in which injustice 
has been done to any true Republican, I here recall it. Let 
things of this sort be forgiven on every hand and let the waters 
of forgetfulness conceal them from future view. 

There is, however, another incident which has grieved me at 
its every recurrence. I refer to allusions which have been made 
to the political antecedents of men — to a tendency to put forward 
some discrimination to be made between members of the same 
household of faith. In former times I was a Whig and believed 
in the " mill boy of the slashes." [Applause.] In later days, 
when divisions had arisen, I was a Seward Whig, but I should be 
disappointed indeed were I to know that a single vote which has 
been cast for me was given for no better reason than a recollec- 
tion of what I was. The thing they are is the test by which Re- 
publicans are tried and he, who would drive the wedge of an- 



80 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

cient divisions and by-gone antagonisms into the party to which 
we all belong, would split it asunder and strew wreck and ruin in 
his way. 

******* 

Three rousing cheers were given as the candi- 
date retired from the platform. 

Several days later Mr. Conkling challenged his 
opponent, Mr. Root, to a joint canvass of the dis- 
trict, as may be seen by the following corre- 
spondence. 

MR. CONKLING's letter. 

Utica, September 28th, 1858. 

Dear Sir: — Having been nominated by our respective parties 
for an important representative ofifice, I propose that we meet be- 
fore the electors of the district to discuss the political issues 
which now occupy the country and to define our several positions 
respecting them. 

The practice of making direct avowals of political views, and 
submitting to open interrogation and scrutiny, has commended 
itself of late to candidates for nearly every elective office in the 
country ; and I welcome the custom, as you doubtless do, as a 
harbinger of honesty and truth and as a safeguard against de- 
ception and all the base appliances of politics. 

At this time especially, there seems unusual fitness in afford- 
ing to every elector before he makes choice of a representative in 
Congress, the opportunity to question the opposing candidates 
in the presence of each other. So serious are the charges against 
the Administration of Mr, Buchanan, and so deeply interesting to 
Oneida County are the issues involved in your election or mine, 
that they cannot be too freely canvassed. 

It is the intention of the Republican party to arraign the policy 
and acts of the President and his supporters in all the particulars 
mentioned in the resolutions passed at the convention held at 
Rome on the 21st instant. 



A CHALLENGE TO HIS OPPONENT. gl 

The times, places and mode of meeting the citizens of the 
various parts of the county I leave entirely to your convenience 
subject only to the proviso that we make haste so as to leave no 
town unvisited. You will oblige me by returning an answer at 
your earliest convenience. 

With much respect, your obedient servant, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Hon. P. S. Root, Utica. 



MR. ROOT S LETTER. 

Utica, September 30, 1858. 

Hon. R. CoNKLING, 

Dear Sir:— I have received your note of the 28th instant, pro- 
posing that we meet before the electors of this district to discuss 
the political issues of the day. 

I am aware the custom you refer to prevails generally at the 
South and to some extent in the Western States. That mode of 
conducting a political canvass, however, has never been adopted 
in this county or State, and I am disinclined to assume the re- 
sponsibility of introducing it at the present time. Besides, if 
disposed to do so, it would be impossible for me, under existing 
circumstances, to comply with your request. My official and 
other engagements are such as to require my personal attendance 
at my office daily, almost. For that reason I could not hope to 
be able to visit the several towns as suggested by you, however 
desirable it might be to do so. 

I must therefore respectfully decline your proposal and for 
myself take some other method of making known to the electors 
of the county my opinions upon the questions they are to pass 
upon in the coming election. 

The subjects that most deeply concern the public at this 
time and upon which the Congress, to which one of us will prob- 
ably be elected, may have occasion to act, are Kansas and the 
tariff. 

I will state to you frankly my position on these questions : 
I am in favor of admitting Kansas with her present population 
as one of the States of the Union, whenever the people of that 
6 



82 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Territory present a Constitution and request such admission. All 
parties have declared emphatically that her present population 
was sufficient to justify her admission — the Republicans by voting 
to admit her under the Topeka and the Democrats under the 
Lecompton Constitution. 

I am also in favor of a tariff and ever have been. It is abso- 
lutely essential for revenue purposes. The millions required an- 
nually for the support of Government can be provided in no 
way so well and advantageously as by duties imposed on foreign 
imports. In adjusting the tariff, regard should be had for the 
manufacturing and productive interests of the country. They 
should be fostered and encouraged and it seems to me it can be 
done, so far as necessary, without difficulty or serious objection, 
considering the very large amount of revenue required annually 
for governmental purposes. 

It is well known that when our various manufacturing estab- 
lishments are in active, successful operation, all departments of 
labor and industry flourish and all classes of community partake 
of the common benefit. 

With great respect, your obedient servant, 

P. Sheldon Root. 

Mr. Root did not speak during this memorable 
contest, but O. 13. Matteson aided him with the 
support of an opposition newspaper. The canvass 
was waged with great activity by both pohtical 
parties. Mr. Conkling addressed meetings in all 
of the thirty-six towns and wards of the county. 

Coming to Utica with slender means, and rely- 
ing on his own efforts for his legal education and 
position, he had the young men in sympathy with 
him, and they gave him a rousing majority at the 
polls. 

The Republican newspapers called Mr. Root 



ENDORSED BY WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 83 

"the Buchanan nominee for Congress." They 
also said: " ConkUng-'s tour is a triumphal march; 
his meetings are thronged; his speeches ring with 
eloquence and liberty and his hearers are enthu- 
siastic in their praise." 

While the Congressional candidate went occa- 
sionally to the neighboring villages to address the 
voters, a few days later his brother-in-law, Horatio 
Seymour, visited the same places to overthrow 
the work that Mr. Conkling had just done. 

Senator William H. Seward made a speech in 
behalf of Roscoe Conkling, at Rome, October 29, 
1858. Mr. Seward was then the leader of the Re- 
publican party in New York. His voice had long- 
proclaimed its tenets, and his counsel had con- 
trolled its affairs. Two years later he became the 
unanimous choice of the New York delegation at 
the Republican National Convention in Chicago. 
It was hence " a feather in his cap " when Mr. 
Conkling obtained Mr. Seward's aid in the can- 
vass. The Senator spoke at length upon the Re- 
publican party in general, and the Congressional 
candidate in particular. 

Referring to Roscoe Conkling, Mr. Seward, 
among other things, said: 

* * * You have decided that the interests of the cause in this 
district will be best promoted by the election of another member 
of the party, Mr. R.oscoe Conkling. It is my duty to acquiesce in 



84 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING, 

that decision, and I do acquiesce in it without regarding the sub- 
ject as open for review or further consideration. As it has been 
pleasant for me to bear my testimony in behalf of Mr. Matteson, 
so it is an occasion of sincere pleasure to speak in terms of the 
highest respect and- esteem for the gentleman whom you have 
nominated to be his successor. Mr. Conkling, as you are aware, 
has been known to me longer than to yourselves. He was born, 
I think, certainly he was reared, in the town in which I live, and 
his parents and family have been for near twenty - five years 
among my most intimate personal friends. I saw in his child- 
hood and early youth the indications of that high order of genius 
and talent which he has since developed among yourselves. 
While I remarked those indications with pleasure, it would be 
unjust to withhold the further confession, that when divisions oc- 
curred which carried many friends into courses and associations 
diverging from mine, Mr. Conkling remained in the course which 
I thought was the wise and true one, and perseveringly adhered 
to my own fortunes in political life. 

After bearing this testimony of Mr. Conkling, it remains for 
me to declare, that I earnestly and with my whole heart desire 
the return of Roscoe Conkling to the House of Representatives. 
First, because the choice is between him, as a true friend of 
Freedom, and another, who in my judgment will be unfaithful to 
that cause. I do not reflect upon the personal integrity of the 
opposing candidate, but I say that he belongs to the Democratic 
party of the State of New York, which is faithless to that cause. 
If he should accept service in that cause, he must be untrue to 
the party by whose suffrages he was elected. In the choice be- 
tween that cause and that party, I know no reason to suppose that 
he would choose the distinction of martyrdom for Freedom's 
sake. Secondly, I desire Mr. Conkling's election because he will 
bring into the discharge of his high trust a true devotion to the 
cause of justice and humanity, as well as confessed and superior 
ability. Such men will be wanted more in the Congress of 1S59 
and i860 than ever before. * * * 

The election occurred November 2, 1858. The 
whole number of votes cast for member of Con- 



ELECTED BY A LARGE MAJORITY. 85 

gress was 19,335, of which Roscoe Conkhng re- 
ceived 11,084 and P. Sheldon Root 8,251. Hence 
Conkhng's majority was 2,833; ^ majority that 
testified to his great local popularity and personal 
worth. 

It is worthy of remark that Mr. Conkling's fa- 
ther represented in the Seventeenth Congress 
what might be called the same district of Central 
New York. 

Unlike many other prominent public men, Ros- 
coe Conkling, on his way to that political career 
upon which his fame rests, did not pass through the 
lower stages of State politics, i. e., the two houses 
of the Legislature. We have seen that he held one 
county and one municipal office, but he was never 
selectman, alderman, nor member of the board of 
supervisors. When elected to Congress he was 
just twenty-nine years of age. 

Soon after his election, the autograph hunters 
began to pursue him, as may be seen by the follow- 
ing letter. It is taken from a copy in his own 
hand. He then commenced the habit of keeping 
a transcript of everything except notes answering 
a social invitation. 

Utica, November 13, 1858. 

My Dear Sir : Your note of day before yesterday is before 
me. 

The signature of an humble son of toil, one of a countless 
brotherhood! What can it be wanted for? No banker wants 



86 LIFE AND LETJ'ERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

it; no spell, no honor, attaches to it — a worthless thing — per- 
haps it is to have a place upon the roll of kindly remembered 
names. 

This may be it. I'll give it with the kind regards of 

Your ob't serv't, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

W. W. Cobb, Esquire. 

The following correspondence between Thomas 
Corwin, of Ohio and Roscoe Conkling relates to 
the Thirty-sixth Congress. 

Corwin & Sage, Attorneys at Law. ) 
Lebanon, O., 26th Dec, 1858. ) 

Dear Sir : I am not hcad'=>\.xox\g. I wish I were somewhat 
stronger in that quarter than I ever was or shall be. Some 
rather sad experience has made me rather mulish, or perhaps 
brought me to a resemblance of the father of that most useful 
and much abused animal. I feel a disposition to stand still, shake 
my ears and kick. Whether I am prompted by angels, as was 
Balaam's horse of old, only eternity will decide. I could not 
believe that it was a sensible and reasonable thing that a man 
whom they never saw should travel 500 miles to tell your con- 
stituents how to vote. Yet to comply with your wishes I would 
have done so, had I not promised a poor God-forsaken Irishman 
that I would cut him down from the gallows. I did feel very 
anxious for your success, for I thought there was both knowledge 
and truth in you. Both are now needed in our public affairs 
more than ever for the last forty years. If you don't see this 
now, you will when_jv« take your seat in Congress. 

I may visit New York in March or April. I should like very 
much to see you then. I have one or two schemes in my head. 
If I can see them accomplished, I shall have achieved all I wished 
when I determined once more to leap into the stormy sea of poli- 
tics. I am not sanguine. I have learned to hope for little, and 
thank God for very small favors. But if nothing is attempted, 



MR. COR WIN'S LETTERS. 87 

nothing will be accomplished. We must try to anchor the old 
ship in safe mooring. If we fail, why, God only can help us and 

the good ship too. 

Your friend, 

Thos. Corwin. 

RoscoE CoNKLiNG, Utica, N. Y. 

\Private.'\ 
Corwin & Sage, Attorneys at Law. 
Lebanon, O., i6th March, 1859. 
Dear Sir: You may have seen that I am "spoken of" as a 
proper person to be made Speaker of the next House of Con- 
gress. I am quite willing to take that " burden" upon me. I 
do not, will not, solicit the office. Will you do me the favor to 
say, in reply to this, whether you believe the New York Republi- 
cans would be likely to vote for me. You see I ask your confi- 
dence. I beg you to put this in the fire and let me know it if 
the question I ask is in any sense disagreeable. I do not value 
any office at a rate so high as the esteem of an honest man. 

Yours truly, 

Thos. Corwin. 

R. CoNKLiNG, Esq. 

MR. CONKLING TO MR. CORWIN. 

Utica, March 19, 1859. 
My Dear Sir : I have the pleasure to acknowledge your 
favor of the i6th inst., just received. I infer that my letter writ- 
ten you some time since on my return from Washington has never 
been received. It related in part to the general subject of^ your 
letter now before me. The question you put as to the action of 
our delegation upon the question of Speaker is hard to answer 
with any certainty, but you entirely mistake my feelings if you 
suppose I have the slightest reserve or reluctance in giving you 
all the light I can. That several of our delegation are for you, 
I have good reason to believe, and I know of no reason why 
every man in the delegation may not vote for you. I do not 
think any committals have been made. 

It has been suggested that strong combinations may centre 



88 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

upon Horace F. Clark, anti-Lecompton Democrat, from New 
York City. In such an event men might of course be carried 
from their spontaneous preferences. Nothing, however, short of 
a want of sufficient votes to carry a Rei)ubUcan could bring 
about such a result, it seems to me. Then, too, our party mana- 
gers and President - makers will have their "slate," which will 
" carry " with more or less of the delegation, no doubt. This lamp 
will be fed with such oil as would flow from the sound of your voice 
in this State, if you would let it be heard in season. Think of this. 

Mr. Grow will no doubt seek the place, relying in part upon 
having received the caucus nomination last year. But there 
seems of late a drifting toward Mr. Sherman, of your State (who 
is announced, in case no extra session is called, to go abroad with 
Dr. Bailey of the National Era) ; this movement would of course 
add importance to the attitude of your delegation. 

Assuming that the question in caucus should be a simple one 
upon Speaker, by itself, untrammeled by location, and Ohio should 
vote for her most distinguished son, I should marvel if New York 
did not also vote him. I wish I might see you for an hour or 
two. If you are to be in or near this State soon, let me know it, 
if you please, and let me know also how Ohio and other States, as 
far as you are advised will stand, not only their Representa- 
tives, but leading men. Mr. Wade, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Trumbull, 
Mr. Chase, for example, how are they ? Do not hesitate to write 
anything to me. You are perfectly safe in doing so. In the 
hopes of an early reply, I am, 

Very truly yours, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

Hon. Thos. Corwin. 

CoRWiN & Sage, Attorneys at Law. ) 
Lebanon, O., 24th March, 1S59. J 
Dear Sir: Thanks for your letter, which I read last night on 
my return home. I pray you give not a moment's thought to the 
subject of our correspondence. I should like to have the power 
to organize the House — that's all. I see the difficulties that lay 
across the track, and I fear they will be beyond control until we 
are defeated in i860; then we may unite in a respectable minority. 



A FRIENDLY LETTER, 89 

We shall be well whipt in the next grand Battle unless we can 
relax a very little of the selfishness and Egotism of party North 
and South. At present the South is by far the most unreasoning 
and unreasonable of the two. The others on all hands deserve 
death. If I come near you soon, I will advise you of my coming 
and will contrive to see you. Do not suppose for a moment that 
I fear to trust you or myself. My confidence is entire, if it exist 
at all. Besides, on such matters, I have not, never had, a secret. 
Perhaps that is a grave error. I can't help it, and don't care if it 
be so. 

Truly your friend, 

Thos. Corwin. 

Hon. R. CONKLING. 

Utica, April 9th, 1859. 
My Dear Sir: I have been absent, and now improve the first 
convenient opportunity to answer your favor of the 24th ult. I 
am, I confess, a little disappointed by what you say, and not a 
little sorry for the determination to which you seem virtually to 
have come, touching the subject of our recent correspondence. 
I hope my last letter has had nothing to do with your conclusion. 
I meant it as a simple statement of all the information in my 
power of the kind most likely to be useful to you, but I fear it 
in some way failed in its office. You bid me dismiss the whole 
subject from my thoughts. This I cannot do — I would not do so. 
As I wrote once before, you enter too largely into my thoughts 
of a pleasant and instructive term in Congress to allow me to 
dismiss any matter connected with you which I have a right to 
meddle with. Why, if I should heed your exhortation, I should 
drive out of mind the probability of one of the most agreeable 
things to me which possibly could happen. I hope you will re- 
consider your present inclination. Of course, as a friend of yours, 
I would not if I could, be instrumental in inducing you to enter 
into a personal endeavor for such a result, but if it shall come in 
a different mode I v/ould have the way clear. But I will not 
wander into suggestions, for these you do not need from me. 
Very truly your obt. servant, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Hon. Thos. Corwin, Lebanon, O. 



90 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



Lebanon, April i6, 1859. 

My Dear Sir: On my return home this evening I received 
your letter of the 9th inst., and hasten to answer it. 

I beg you to believe that my last letter to you was not written 
in any spirit of petulance, complaint, or dissatisfaction with any- 
thing contained in your letter to me. 

Having learned that some of the leading Republicans of this 
State looked upon me with distrust and did not consider me as 
friendly to their party organization as they thought I ought to 
be, I came to the conclusion that it was useless to give myself 
any further concern, or put my friends to any trouble with refer- 
ence to the Speakership of the next Congress. The organization 
of the next House is an object which I have greatly at heart, and 
I verily believe that I can control it more to the advantage of the 
country than anyone whom I have yet heard of as likely to be 
chosen to fill the chair. That opinion was founded not in any 
egotism, but was the result of my estimate of my particular posi- 
tion with reference to the different parties. I have been recently 
in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New York, and happened to meet 
with some of the leading minds in all of these States. From all 
that I have seen, I have come to the conclusion that the con- 
servatism of the North and of the South will be swallowed up by 
two violent sectional parties; and my opinion is that Democracy 
led on by the South will prevail. Facts to be developed this sum- 
mer, among which the Virginia elections will occupy a conspicu^ 
ous place, may change this view of the subject. 

My extreme anxiety to accomplish certain great National ob- 
jects will forbid my entering into a scramble for any office which 
might embarrass me in the attainment of the ends which I have 
in view. It was my desire to accomplish these ends which main- 
ly prompted me to wish the control of the organization of the 
House. On all these sul)jects the history of the next six months 
will throw more light. It will be our duty to act upon matters 
and things as they may exist when Congress shall assemble. In 
the mean time, whatever may happen I hope to enjoy much pleas- 
ure in your society and that of a few other kindred spirits. 

Yours truly, 

R. CoNKLiNG, Esq. Thos. Corv/in. 



I859-I86I. 
CHAPTER VII. 

HIS FIRST TERM IN CONGRESS EXTRACTS FROM 

SPEECHES ON THE POWERS OF THE SUPREME 
COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND IN OPPOSI- 
TION TO SLAVERY. 

TT is stated in the preceding chapter that Mr. 
ConkUng resigned from the mayoralty Nov- 
ember 19, 1859. A few days later he went with 
his family to Washington and began his Con- 
gressional career. This was perhaps the most 
exciting and eventful Congress since the year 
1812. 

The Thirty-sixth Congress met Monday, Decem- 
ber 5, 1859. At that time the State of New York 
was represented in the Senate by William H. Sew- 
ard and Preston King, whose terms expired re- 
spectively in 1861 and 1863. The House consisted 
of 237 members and five Territorial delegates. It 
v/as politically divided as follows : Republicans 
109, Democrats 10 1, Americans twenty-six, and 
one Whig — Emerson Etheridge, of the ninth dis- 
trict of Tennessee. It will be seen that, although 

9» 



92 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



in a minority, the Republicans outnumbered any- 
other party. 

Of the thirty-three members of the New York 
delegation, there were twenty-four Republicans, 
seven Democrats and two Americans. Among 
the first named were Francis E. Spinner, Eldridge 
G. Spaulding and Reuben E. Fenton. The Dem- 
ocrats included Daniel E. Sickles and John Coch- 
rane, as well as Horace F. Clark, John B. Haskin 
and JohnH. Reynolds, who were classified as anti- 
Lecompton Democrats. The two " American " 
members were Luther C. Carter and George 
Briggs. 

Some of Mr. Conkling's associates from other 
States were, Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; Charles 
F. Adams, Alexander IT Rice, Henry L. Dawes 
and Anson Burlingame, of Massachusetts; Thad- 
deus Stevens and Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsyl- 
vania ; Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland ; George 
H. Pendleton, Clement L. Vallandigham, James 
M. Ashley, Thomas Corwin, Samuel S. Cox and 
John Sherman, of Ohio ; William H. English, Will- 
iam S. Holman and Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana ; 
Elihu B. Washburne and John A. Logan, of Illi- 
nois, and John H. Reagan, of Texas. 

The clerk of the last House (James C. Allen) 
called the House to order, and only nine members 
failed to answer to their names. 



MR. PENNINGTON BECOMES SPEAKER. 93 

The first vote for Speaker took place on the 
opening day of this Congress. The whole num- 
ber of votes cast was 230; necessary to a choice, 
116; of which Thomas S. Bocock received eighty- 
six, John Sherman, sixty-six, and Galusha A. 
Grow, forty-three ; several other candidates each 
receiving from one to five votes. 

The result was, of course, no choice. 

A long and bitter contest over the Speakership 
ensued. After many ballots John Sherman, who 
was the Republican candidate, gave way to ex- 
Governor William Pennington, the sole Republi- 
can from New Jersey. 

The forty-fourth ballot decided the battle, Feb- 
ruary I, i860. There were 233 votes cast; neces- 
sary to a choice, 117, of which 

William Pennington received 117 

John A. McClernand 85 

John A. Gilmer 16 

Eight other members received severally one or two 
votes. 

Governor Pennington was hence declared duly 
elected; and the clerk, after presiding for the long 
term of two months, left the Speaker's chair. 

Slavery was then the supreme issue in the re- 
public. The raid of John Brown in Virginia and 
the question of Kansas were its turning-points. 
In this Congress occurred a long dispute concern- 



94 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 



ing Hinton Rowan Helper's Impressions of the 
South, wherein slavery was discussed from the 
economical standpoint. 

Mr. Conkling entered Congress against the ear- 
nest protest of his partner. The firm were grad- 
ually getting the " cream " of the legal practice 
of Central New York, yet the inducements were 
such that he could hardly decline his first nomi- 
nation. He was but twenty-nine years of age 
and a nomination was equivalent to an election. 
His father had been in Congress, and Mr. Conkling 
took a warm and growing interest in national 
affairs. 

Despite the fact that his father had been a slave- 
holder in the Mohawk Valley, he wished to do his 
utmost to aid in suppressing slavery. He was one 
of the youngest members of the House. Consider- 
ing this fact, his influence and standing are worthy 
of mention. 

He took no active part in the " society " of the 
capital. In fact it was difficult for Northern men 
to attend social gatherings. The families of mem- 
bers from the North and South did not associate. 
Conversation at dinner-parties was embarrassing, 
for one did not always know his neighbor's views on 
public questions. Republicans were to a large ex- 
tent tabooed in Democratic circles. The same spirit 
was shown in the galleries of Congress. There the 



THE FEELING AGAINST THE NORTH. 



95 



ladies divided themselves on different sides — the 
one for the North, the other against it. In this 
state of affairs Mr. Conkling had neither the wish 
nor the opportunity to partake of social festivities. 
National affairs were grave and menacing and the 
impending crisis at the South was constantly- 
expected. Mr. Conkling was an admirer of the 
scholarly Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, and 
of the swarthy orator, Thomas Corwin, of Ohio. 
When the latter spoke, the galleries were crowd- 
ed, as were those of the Senate many years 
afterward, when Roscoe Conkling had the floor. 
He engaged in copious correspondence with his 
father, who was a Nestor in the law. When Judge 
Conkling received from his son a letter asking 
advice on some legislative question, he would 
often sit up late at night to return a prompt reply. 

A colleague of Roscoe Conkling says of him: 
" At first Mr. Conkling was c^uiet, reserved and 
attentive. Representatives soon appreciated him 
and consulted him, e. g., Charles Francis Adams. 
Conkling was politic and very observant. He was 
also a ready speaker, and his influence could be 
felt in many ways." 

One of Mr. Conkling's warmest friends and 
counselors was Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsyl- 
vania. He served with him in two subsequent 
'Congresses and during this period their friend- 



g6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

ship increased. A notable incident of the ses- 
sion occurred December 6, when Mr. ConkHngr 
stood in the aisle by the side of Mr. Stevens, to 
protect him from the assaults of several Southern 
fire-eaters. The occurrence was minutely de- 
scribed in the New York Evening Post. The article 
is here given in substance; and it is worthy of 
remark that, seven years later, the same newspaper 
advocated Mr. Conkling's election for Senator, 
but soon afterward became his bitter enemy. At 
the time of the Stevens incident it was said that 
the galleries were full of armed men, who were 
ready to climb over the railing and drop to the 
floor in case a fight ensued. Had a collision oc- 
curred, it is probable that many members would 
have been killed. 

\From the '■'Evening Post" New York, January 14, i860.] 
/ An Occasion, and the Man for it. 
To the Editors of the Evening Post : 

Early in the session of the present Congress, Stevens, of 
Pennsylvania, was making an earnest speech in reply to the fire- 
eaters, who had been thrown into rhetorical convulsions by the 
ghost of John Brown, when Keitt and several kindred spirits 
rushed from their scats with the intention of scaring the speaker, 
or punishing him for the free use of his excoriating Saxon. 

* * -X- * * -Sfr ^f 

The clerk could not control them — the laws of God and the 
laws of man, parliamentary usage, and the rules of courtesy, 
were gossamer threads to them, for their blood was up, ami they 
were determined to put down by force the man they could not 



A FRIEND OF THADDEUS STEVENS. 



97 



answer by argument. During this tempest of excitement, a tall, 
handsome young man, who had been a silent spectator of the 
storm, quietly arose from his seat and walked hastily to the side 
of the orator; there he stood, with flashing eyes and folded arms, 
ready to risk his life in defense of free speech and freedom. 
Washburne, Kenyon, Sedgwick and others were soon at his side, 
but he stood there like Saul among the Hebrews, a head and 
shoulders the tallest. 

I would say, in parenthesis, that those scions of the South who 
have regard for their personal welfare had better not venture too 
far on the good nature of this accomplished gentleman, unless 
they have enjoyed the advantages of that physical training which 
will enable them to defend themselves when they deserve to be 
punished. I speak of the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, of Oneida. 
He is a man of great physical strength and courage to match, 
and, I will add, his physical education has not been neglected. 
He is always a gentleman — a bully, never — and is distinguished 
for a happy combination of the suave in inodo with the forte in re, 
and will be the last man in Congress to provoke an assault, and 
the first to resent an insult. 

Though eloquent, he has not yet spoken in Congress ; but 
Oneida has a voice as well as a vote there, and when the time 
comes for him to speak he will do honor to himself and his con- 
stituents. 

Tt % TT 5p y ^ ^ 

Mr. Conkling seldom, spoke during the first ses- 
sion of this Congress, and up to this time his repu- 
tation as an orator was local, not national. Henry 
Winter Davis, of Maryland and Thomas Corwin, 
of Ohio, were perhaps the most prominent orators, 
although the latter was better known as a Western 
stump speaker. 

While a member of Congress, Mr. Conkling was 
constantly in attendance at the sessions. The 



q8 life and letters of roscoe conk ling. 

winter was mainly devoted to a debate as to what 
would be the attitude of the Democratic party 
with regard to the slavery question in the Presi- 
dential campaign of i860. 

For the greater part of the session Mr. Conk- 
ling was a listener and a learner. Two months 
having been spent in selecting a Speaker, there 
was no work for him in the committee-room. On 
February 9, the Speaker announced the stand- 
ing committees and the member from Oneida 
was appointed on that for the District of Columbia. 

Between Northern and Southern members re- 
lations were now somewhat strained. When- 
ever a member was seen handing notes or cards 
to a colleague on the floor of the House, it was 
at once supposed that the note contained a chal- 
lenge. A sensational item grew out of this fact, 
for the correspondent of a New York journal 
started a rumor that Mr. Conkling had come into 
collision with Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi. 
Apropos to this story Mr. Conkling made the fol- 
lowing explanation, which is taken from the Con- 
gressional Globe oi January 13, i860: 

Mr. Conkltfig. With the consent of the gentleman from Ten- 
nessee, I will make a brief personal explanation. My attention 
has been called to a dispatch, emanating, I suppose, from the 
reporters' gallery of this House, which has been sent to a news- 
paper published in the city of New York, in which my name and 
the name of the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Barksdale) 



A PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 99 

are brought into juxtaposition. I ask the clerk to read the 
names I have marked. 

The clerk read as follows: 

NOTES BETWEEN MEMBERS. 

Cards between Conkling and Barksdale. 
Mr. Conkling, of New York, has also passed a note to Mr. Barksdale, 
of Mississippi. 

Mr. Conkling. That is enough; and all I desire to say is, that 
the statement is entirely without foundation, as I never had the 
pleasure of holding with the gentleman from Mississippi the cor- 
respondence there referred to, or any correspondence whatever. 

Mr. Barksdale. I desire simply to corroborate the statement 
made by the gentleman from New York; and to say that there is 
not the slightest foundation for the dispatch contained in that 
paper, and that I have never received from that gentleman a mes- 
sage of any character, much less a hostile one. 

Mr. Keitt. I did not intend to allude to this matter when it 
was brought to my attention this morning. It has never been 
my custom to correct newspaper errors, or to notice any news- 
paper representations or misrepresentations whatever; but after 
the member from New York (Mr. Conkling) has disclaimed, my 
silence might be construed into an affirmation of the facts stated 
in that same dispatch. With the excitement yesterday I have 
only to say that I had nothing to do, and there is no foundation 
whatever, so far as I am concerned, for that dispatch, as to my 
sending a message or note to the member from New York. 

Mr. Vallandlgham. Inasmuch as this subject has been intro- 
duced, I beg leave to say that I was the ''second " of the gen- 
tleman from New York (Ivlr. Conkling) in passing a little court 
plaster, in an envelope, from him to the gentleman from Missis- 
sippi (Mr. Barksdale). I believe that was all that "passed" 
between them and gave rise to the report just referred to. 
[Laughter.] 

The first speech of Mr. Conkhng was upon the 
contested election case between Daniel E. Sickles 
and Amos J. Williamson of the third Congres- 



lOO LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK' LING. 

slonal district of the city of New York. Several 
years before, he had been counsel for the contest- 
ant at an election in Central New York, and he 
then became familiar with the law of canvassing 
votes. Mr. Conkling spoke in behalf of Mr. Will- 
iamson, who was a Republican. This case may 
be briefly described as follows : 

The Board of Canvassers for New York County 
in 1858 returned the votes cast in several Congres- 
sional districts as cast for member of Congress. 
The Board of State Canvassers held that on this 
statement they could not give any one a certificate 
as representative in Congress. On this state of 
facts, and in reply to other Representatives, Mr. 
Conkling made a long legal argument. Thus he 
concluded his remarks : 

" I hope, sir, that we shall be able to steer clear of the techni- 
cal impediments that have been thrust in our way, and to arrive 
at the truth touching the rights and qualifications of the person 
most concerned in these proceedings." 

Referring to the Sickles -Williamson case, the 
New York Tribune published the following dis- 
patch, dated at Washington, March 20, i860. 

The contested election case of Messrs. Williamson and 
Sickles occupied nearly the whole sitting of the House. Messrs. 
Dawes and Campbell made a clear presentation of the case, sus- 
taining the resolution of the majority, allowing Mr. Williamson 
time to take testimony, which was answered by Messrs. Gilmer 
and Gartrell. Roscoe Conkling's arirument reviewing those 



A CELEBRATED CHALLENGE. lOI 

speeches, defending the action cf the Board of Canvassers in not 
issuing certificates of election, because of the admitted informal- 
ity of the votes, and sustaining the course which Williamson had 
pursued as a contestant, made a marked impression. Though 
addressed to legal propositions mainly, the reasoning was so clear, 
close and conclusive as to attract general interest, and extort 
praise from all sides, at once giving Mr. Conkling a prominent 
position among the ablest minds of the House. No more suc- 
cessful first effort has been witnessed for years and with so little 
parade or preparation. 

Amos J. Cumming"s, of the New York Sun, has 
lately published the following reminiscence : 

I received my first impressions of Roscoe Conkling from 
reading about him in the newspapers. He was then a Congress- 
man. It was during the days of the anti-Lecompton fight. John 
B. Haskin was one of the Douglas Democrats who voted for Pen- 
nington for speaker. In one of the exciting scenes in the House 
over the Kansas row, Haskin resented an attempt at " bulldoz- 
ing " on the part of the Southern members. His gesticulations 
were so violent that a revolver dropped from his breast pocket, 
and Conkling quietly kicked it under a seat out of sight. After- 
ward he returned it to Haskin. The newspaper correspondents 
got hold of the incident, however, and told the story in masterly 
style, giving great credit to Conkling for his presence of mind. 

The desperate character and the spirit of hos- 
tility manifested by the Southern members toward 
the members from the North may be illustrated in 
the challenge of Mr. Pryor, of Virginia, to Mr. Pot- 
ter, of Wisconsin, for what the former termed an 
" affront offered in debate." The correspondence 
began April ii, i860. Mr. Potter replied on the 
same day, and referred his opponent to Colonel 



T02 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Lander, his second. The latter gentleman, in an- 
swer to a formal challenge, chose bowie-knives as the 
weapons, and the distance to be four feet at the 
commencement of the engagement. The member 
from Virginia at once declined to fight the duel. 

Mr. Conkling's work in the House was not as a 
mere district representative, but as a statesman 
whose intellect and sympathies were broad enough 
for the whole country. His first long speech was 
in Committee of the Whole on the state of the 
Union, concerning President Buchanan's last an- 
nual message. That tool of the propagandists of 
slavery had united the power of the Executive 
branch of the Government to that of the Judiciary 
under the lead of Chief-Justice Taney, to override 
the Legislative branch, and to fasten human slav- 
ery forever on the Territories by a dictum of law. 
The Supreme Court of the United States, in deny- 
ing the citizenship of Dred Scott, had asserted in 
effect that every acre of the Territories was al- 
ready the lawful prey of slavery; and President 
Buchanan had declared in terms that " neither 
Congress, nor a Territorial Legislature, nor any 
human power had authority to annul or impair 
this vested right." 

It was this assumption of the Supreme Court to 
interpret the Constitution, and to bind the law- 
making department of the Government to that 



A RARE COMPLIMENT. 



103 



interpretation, which Mr. ConkUng attacked with 
an argument which defines the hmits of the three 
co-ordinate branches of our Government. He 
proved from the Constitution itself, and the de- 
bates and votes of the convention which framed 
it, that whenever the federal Judiciary gave a 
decision which, in the judgment of Congress, was 
subversive of the rights and liberties of the people, 
or was otherwise hurtfully erroneous, it was not 
only the right, but the solemn duty, of Congress 
persistently to disregard it. The long argument 
was from beginning to end unanswerable. 

Roscoe Conkling was allowed one hour, but at 
the end of his time, when the hammer fell, and it 
was found that he had not finished his remarks, a 
proposition came from the Democratic side of the 
House that he should be allowed more time, which 
was agreed to. It is hardly necessary to say that 
such a tribute is seldom paid to any member of 
any party, and especially to a young man among 
the new members of Congress. The speech was 
delivered April 16, i860, and it is fully reported on 
pages 233—236, in the appendix to the Congres- 
sional Globe of the first session of the Thirty-sixth 
Congress. The Republican Executive Congres- 
sional Committee printed this speech in pamphlet 
form and made it a campaign document in the 
Presidential contest of i860. Hon. Preston King, 



I04 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK'LING. 

of New York, was the chairman of this Committee. 
A small part of the speech is here given : 
Mr. Conkling said: 

Mr. Chairman : I purpose to remark upon that part of the 
message whereni the President informs us that the fate of all the 
Territories of the republic has been irrevocably sealed by the 
action of a court of law. 

The announcement is a very extraordinary one; it could never 
have been made had our institutions been purely elective. Ob- 
jectionable as such a system may have appeared to our fathers, 
it would have preserved the American Congress forever from such 
a greeting as the present Executive has sent us. 

With no powers or agencies save those conferred directly by 
the people, and these deprived of the element of growth by pro- 
visions uprooting them at frequent intervals, an age of the Gov- 
ernment would not have come when a judicial tribunal would 
attempt, in the sense implied by the President, " a final settle- 
ment " of great political questions. Certainly no such attempt 
would have been based upon theories falsifying the history of the 
country, and calculated to enthrone barbarism in every Terri- 
torial possession, if not in the States themselves. But, sir, the 
checks and balances adjusted by our fathers have proved inade- 
quate to avert so strange a contingency. The Government had 
not reached the allotted years of man when its judicial depart- 
ment attempted all that I have stated. In a case presenting the 
simple question of one poor plaintiff's right to maintain his action, 
the Supreme Court has undertaken to fix forever the most sacred 
rights of millions. The step, to be sure, was premature. Ample 
in jurisdiction, and impatient to exercise it, that august tribunal 
was unwilling to turn a black man from its doors without exces- 
sive reasonings. The citizenship of the plaintiff was the only 
point in judgment, and that being determined adversely to him, 
the case was at an end. Nevertheless, the opinions swell into a 
museum of discussion, which, however distinguished the debaters, 
deserves no reverence as law. 

* * * * -St * ■3C- 



THE POWERS OF THE SUPREME COURT. 105 

If the construction now for the first time contended for by 
the party calling itself Democratic be true, the apostles of limited 
government, in their earliest ministrations, installed a power 
practically as irrevocable and irresponsible as an artificial power 
could be, and more sweeping and absolute in its supremacy than 
any judical tribunal mentioned in history. 

Not the Imperial Chamber of Maximilian, not the courts whose 
records have been kept by the headsman at the block, certainly 
no tribunal which has escaped the execrations of humanity, ever 
wielded such unmeasured power. 

Why, sir, the infallibility ascribed to the Supreme Court makes 
the Constitution, the institutions of the country, nothing but wax 
in the hands of judges; it amounts to a running power of amend- 
ment. If the Constitution as the court nov/ expounds it is the 
Constitution we, as legislators, are sworn to support, our alle- 
giance in the year of grace i860 is due to an instrument very dif- 
ferent from that which guided those who have gone before us. 

But, without allowing myself to dwell upon the enormity of 
such a power, let me speak of the anomaly of its existence. 

The federal polity of this country is nothing more than three 
agencies — the legislative, the executive and the judicial; all alike 
constituted by the people to do particular acts. However dis- 
guised by titles or deified by ascriptions, these several depart- 
ments are mere agents of one principal, servants of one master; 
acting and being under one appointment, namely, the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. 

Now, by what dislocation of the settled notions of centuries 
should one of three agents, coeval and identical in origin, be suf- 
fered to determine for himself, as against all the world, not 
merel}^ his own powers, but the rights and powers of his co-agents, 
the construction and effect of the common warrant, and the pow- 
ers, remedies and rights of the common principal ; and this with- 
out escape and without appeal? Bear in mind, in the case I am 
putting, the principal is the jealous people I have described; the 
powers flung away are the same just rescued from eternal loss by 
martyrdom and war. 

But, sir, this one overmastering agent is a more marvelous 
creation than I have stated. Its appointment is perpetual, and 



Io6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE COCKLING . 

was executed in blank, the principal not knowing whose name 
might fill it at first, nor who would succeed when changes should 
occur. The other two of these three agents are selected direct- 
ly and solely by their authorizing power, and they yield up their 
trusts finally at frequent intervals. But notwithstanding this, 
the uncounted and unlimited powers were all, we are told, given 
to the one whose appointment is irrevocr.ble, and whose person- 
ality the principal can never know. * * * 

The press comments on this speech may inter- 
est the reader. 

The Utica Morning Herald mid Daily Gazelle 
pubUshed April 25, i860, the following : 

MR. CONKLINg's speech. 

The late speech of Mr. Conkling on the " Constitutional pow- 
ers and authority of the Supreme Court" has enlisted a degree 
of attention and warmth of commendation surpassed by few if 
any efforts of the session. The Washington Constitution, the per- 
sonal organ of the President, makes it the subject of a leading 
editorial, in which the editor, while assailing its doctrines, con- 
cedes its ability and styles its author "the smooth rhetorician of 
the Seward school from the Oneida District." 

The Washington correspondent of the New 
York Courier and Enquirer pays the speech this 
glowing compliment : 

Another young statesman made an effort in the House, which 
was listened to with the most profound attention by all parties, 
and which was characterized with unusual ability and research. I 
allude to the argument of Mr. Roscoe Conkling upon the Con- 
stitutional powers of the Supreme Court. It was most carefully 
prepared and was delivered with fine effect to a full house. It 
is a very rare occurrence that a new or even an old member can 
secure a good audience of fellow-members, to say nothing of out- 
siders, when tlic House is in Committee of the Whole. It is 



A BRILLIANT SPEECH. 



107 



a high compliment, therefore, to Mr. Conkling's talents as a 
speaker that he was able to retahi both members and spectators 
during his whole hour. But I must pay him the still higher one 
of saying that all seemed to consider themselves well compensated 
for staying. His searching analysis of the Constitution, and his 
definition of the powers which it confers upon the co-ordinate 
branches of the Government, were full of interest, and were com- 
mended by the ablest lawyers in the House, who thronged around 
him to tender their congratulations at the close. Among others 
I noticed Mr. Charles Francis Adams and Hon. Thomas Cor- 
win, both of whom were very hearty in their greetings. Mr. 
Conkling's style is verj^ deliberate and pleasing. His voice fills 
the hall without effort and his manner is entirely easy and self- 
possessed. If the effort of to-day is any evidence of his ability, 
he has a brilliant future before him. 

After the nomination of Lincoln and Hamlin 
at Chicago, Mr. Conkling- left Washington to 
" take the stump " in their behalf. He wished to 
begin at the beginning of the campaign. 

During the summer recess of the Thirty-sixth 
Congress, Roscoe Conkling reviewed his political 
position and discussed the questions of the day. 
He spoke in Utica, June 5, i860, at the Republican 
ratification meeting for Lincoln and Hamlin. 
Among other things he said : . . . " New York 
was there, bearing aloft the proud banner of the 
most illustrious of her living sons (Seward). My 
friends, you may well cheer his name. He went 
to the United States Senate when it best showed 
how, in the lan^ '3.ge of an eminent statesman, 
mere contact with ihe institution of slavery tends 



I08 Z/Ai^" AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

to brutalize the character and manners of men. 
He went to Washington when it was what it is 
now, a hard place, a discouraging place, for an 
honest and industrious representative of a free 
constituency. He went there to vindicate the 
almost forsaken principles of Washington and Jef- 
ferson and Madison. He filled the whole country 
with his renown. His writings and speeches 
found places in the libraries of statesmen in other 
lands. If the question at Chicago had been, Who 
shall be President ? instead of. Who shall be the 
candidate ? beyond all question the choice would 
have fallen upon New York's illustrious states- 
man." Mr. Conkling thus availed himself of the 
opportunity publicly to express his gratitude to 
Senator Seward for his aid in the campaign of 1858. 
In a style often humorous, bringing down the 
house in roars of laughter, Mr. Conkling proceed- 
ed to sketch the character of Lincoln and Hamlin. 
Of the latter he spoke from personal acquaint- 
ance ; as to the former, he had enjoyed the pleas- 
ure of hearing Judge Douglas say he was the 
ablest lawyer in Illinois, and the best stump- 
speaker in the Union. Mr. Douglas said, more- 
over, that Lincoln was an honest man, who be- 
lieved in his politics, and who would carry them 
out in whatever situation he was placed. This he 
thought very high endorsement from a Democrat- 



THE DEBATE OF LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS. lOQ 

ic source. There were two Democratic objections 
to Mr. Lincoln that he had seen. One was that 
he was a "Hoosier," deficient in manners. To this 
Mr. Conkling repHed that he " would uphold 
' Hoosier ' manners any day against plantation 
manners, after having had some experience of the 
latter. It was objected, also, that Mr. Lincoln 
was not a good enough lawyer ! Well, the ears 
of that man must be longer than common who 
could read Lincoln's debate with Douglas and 
call the former a third-rate lawyer." 

He spoke again to four thousand persons at the 
great Republican meeting at Hampton, Septem- 
ber I, i860. Said the Utica Herald : 

* * * He spoke for over two hours and with a power and elo- 
quence which we have never heard him surpass. 

******* 

The speaker discussed the creed of the Republican party; 
refuted the charge that it was sectional; insisted that the Democ- 
racy had been the persistent, unwearying apostles of agitation; 
cited the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, to show who were 
the fomenters of sectional discord; referred to the election of 
Speaker, last winter, when for ten long weeks the Republicans sat 
dumb and patient, while the Democracy raved and ranted like 
madmen; and charged that the latter have for years exclusively 
devoted themselves to the business of slavery agitation to the 
neglect of more practical subjects. 

Mr, Conkling defined with great clearness the radical differ- 
ence between the position of the Republicans and their opponents 
on the question of slavery in the Territories. The former pro- 
posed to exclude it where it has no right to go, while the latter 
endeavor to force it upon free Territories in spite both of Con- 



no LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

gress and the people. He insisted that the doctrine of the power 
to restrict slavery was older than the Constitution; that it was 
never denied by any party until within the past few years; that 
Douglas himself urged the extension of the Missouri line to the 
Pacific Ocean. He denied that there was any essential difference 
between the principles of the Douglas and Breckinridge factions 
of the Democratic party; denounced Popular Sovereignty as first 
a humbug and now a cheat — a humbug, because no such thing 
as a healthy civilization could grow out of competition between 
slavery and freedom; a cheat, because it is now openly avowed, 
even by Douglas himself, that not the people, but the Supreme 
Court, shall exercise " sovereignty " over the Territories. * * * 
He defended the course of the Republicans in Congress dur- 
ing the last session; paid an elocpient tribute to Lincoln; and 
concluded by speaking of the important part which New York 
is to play in the present canvass. 

The delegates chosen by tlie RepubHcans of the 
several towns of Oneida County met in County 
Convention at Spencer liall, Rome, September 4, 
i860. After the usual preliminary business, J. H. 
Mayo, of Western, stated that he desired to see 
the present member of Congress unanimously re- 
nominated. Two delegates then made brief re- 
marks, when Mr. Mayo resumed and said: 

When members of Congress are struck down in their places 
while in the discharge of their duties,* it is time for us to con- 
sider all the qualities of our representatives. Mr. Conkling has 
never cringed nor trembled in presence of the slave power. When 
Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, was threatened in the House, Mr. 
Conkling was the first man to stand by his side, and to protect 
him from insult and assault. The Convention seems impatient. 
I want to see physical as well as mental vigor cultivated. (Cries 
of " Question ! Question !") 

* Charles Sumner. 



RENOMINA TED B Y A CCLAMA TION. \\\ 

The chairman then put the motion " that Hon. 
Roscoe Conkling be nominated unanimously, and 
by acclamation, for representative in Congress." 
The motion was carried without opposition and 
three cheers were griven for Mr. Conkling. Nomi- 
nations for county offices were then made. Next 
came the reading of the resolutions. The one re- 
ferring to Mr. Conkling was as follows: 

Resolved: That the unanimity and enthusiasm with which Hon. 
Roscoe Conkling has been nominated by this Convention well 
exhibits the entire approbation with which the Republicans of 
Oneida regard his Congressional career. While he has performed 
his duties with distinguished ability, his fidelity to the cardinal 
principles of the party has been signal and unwavering, and in his 
person neither our district nor our country has suffered a stain 
upon its fair fame. We receive the true and noble service of his 
first term as an earnest of the valuable and devoted support he 
will render to the Administration of a Republican President. 
Able, trustworthy and upright beyond reproach, his constituents, 
as with one voice, call him again to the councils of the nation. 

The committee of three, which had been ap- 
pointed to notify Mr. Conkling of his renomina- 
tion, soon returned, accompanied by that gentle- 
man, who was greeted with tumultuous cheers. 
Ascending the platform, bespoke substantially as 
follows: 

Mr. President: Two years ago a convention like this confer- 
red upon me the same honor that you have now bestowed. In 
accepting it then, I left with the people of the District but a single 
pledge, and that was that Oneida County should not be disgraced 
or betrayed through me. I promised that no man who gave me 



112 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

his suffrage or support should find that he had voted for one false 
to the principles of his party, or one who would tarnish the honor 
of the District or bring upon it a blot of disgrace. 

In accepting the nomination now offered me — and what to me 
is more valuable still, your confidence and approval — I can only 
renew the same pledge which before I made to you. 

Thanking you, as I do most profoundly, and through you the 
great and generous party you represent, for the cordiality and una- 
nimity with which my name has been presented, I assure you 
that nothing shall be intentionally wanting on my part to de- 
serve your partiality and that of the people of the county of 
Oneida. 

And now, Mr. President, having said thus much, I have a sug- 
gestion to make more in harmony with the convenience and 
wishes of the convention than anything I could say of the con- 
test before us or the victory which awaits us. This body is com- 
posed of business men; men who, at a busy season, have met to 
transact business and for no other purpose. That business is 
completed, a rain is gathering, and many here are far from home. 
An adjournment now will enable all, whether dependent upon the 
railroads or upon special conveyances, to return home before 
night-fall. 

Between now and November we shall all meet again — I trust 
very often — and in that hope I take leave of you for the present. 

The Convention adjourned with repeated cheers 
for Lincohi and Hamhn, for Morgan and Conkhng. 
Some jealous ward poUticians opposed the renom- 
ination of Roscoe Conkhng, but his easy victory in 
the Convention showed that he could rule them 
" by ever daring to be first." 

His subsequent successes were the result of a 
constant collision with the local politicians. Some 
of Mr. Conkline's friends said that these contests 
were a continual shock to his personal and states^ 



A CONKLING DEMOCRA T. II 



manlike digriity. They were, however, mistaken, 
for he went upon the principle that " what is hard 
to get is worth having." 

We have seen that in his election as mayor Mr. 
Conkling received some support from independ- 
ent Democrats. It is well known to the older cit- 
izens of Utica that in the Congressional election 
of i860 he obtained many votes from his political 
opponents. One of the number was William 
Dunn, whose name, in Mr. Conkling's copy of the 
Utica directory of i860, is marked with a cross (X), 
to which are added the words " Voted ConkUng." 
" Bill " Dunn, as he was commonly called, died 
in March, 1889, and the following paragraph from 
the Albany Times oi April 2, 1889, describes him : 

Utica has lost a notable and beloved figure, William Dunn, the 
driver of the baggage wagon from the Utica depot. The Utica 
Observer says : 

" When Senator Conkling habitually rode from the depot to his house 
on Bill's wagon, it was the witty gossip of his companion as well as the 
hard springs of the vehicle that shook up the Senator and gave him an ap- 
petite. William Dunn was a Democrat, but he was 'a Conkling man' 
through and through." 

The Senator had certainly the habit of small courtesies, which 
in a thousand ways won him many friends. 

The election took place in November. Out of 
a total vote of 21,509, Roscoe Conkling received 
12,536, being a majority of 3.563 over Dewitt C. 
Grove. The Republican electors (Lincoln and 
Hamlin) also received 12,536 votes. 



114 LIFE AND LETTERS Oh ROSCOE CONK LING. 

The second session of the Thirty-sixth Con- 
gress was stormy and excitin<j, for the Democratic 
members were fighting tlieir last battles on the . 
eve of their political suicide by secession. ^/\i) 

On the first Monday in December, 1861, Roscoe 
Conkling appeared in his seat and answered to 
his name at the roll-call. This session has but one 
parallel in American history. It was a repetition 
of the year 1832, with this exception: President 
Jackson, in his message, denied the right of a 
State to nullify federal legislation, while Mr. Bu- 
chanan asserted that a State had no constitutional 
right to secede from the Union, but that the na- 
tional Government had no constitutional power 
to prevent it. 

The President's unpatriotic message led to the 
introduction of the Crittenden resolution concern- 
ing the peace conference. Mr. Conkhng voted, 
December 4, 1861, in favor of a motion to ap- 
point a committee of one from each State to con- 
fer upon " the perilous condition of the country." 
It was termed the Select Committee of Thirty- 
three. 

Thomas Corwin, the chairman of the Select Com- 
mittee of Thirty-three, submitted, January 14, 1861, 
a report upon the disturbed condition of the coun- 
try. It was ordered to be printed and made the 
special order for January 21. 



THE STATE OF THE UNION. 1 I 5 

Mr. Conkling took this report as the text for a 
speech upon the state of the Union, and in the 
midst of these grave troubles he rose and made 
one of the most stirring addresses of the session. 
His remarks were widely noticed by the press, the 
Washington correspondents stating that it made 
a great sensation in the House. 

His speech showed the uncompromising front 
which he presented to the rebellion from its 
beginning to its overthrow, and displayed in 
grand proportions his hatred of human bond- 
age. 

A short extract from this speech of January 30, 
1 86 1 (including the opening and closing para- 
graphs), is here printed 

From the outset of this session, I have had little hope that 
anything could be done here or in the other end of the Capitol 
to arrest the revolution now prevailing in some portions of the 
country. I was long ago convinced that the turbulence now fes- 
tered to rebellion along the Gulf of Mexico had its origin in 
causes which Congress could not remove, nor even diminish or 
retard. Yet I have never doubted that a very numerous class of 
persons in the slaveholding States — persons whose patriotism 
might safely challenge comparison with that of any other citizens 
of the country — were controlled in their political sentiments and 
action by misapprehensions as to the designs of the masses of the 
non-slaveholding States; misapprehensions which all good men 
would gladly unite in dispelling. It would be strange, indeed, if 
this were not so. For years past, gentlemen representing slave- 
holding constituencies on this floor have not hesitated to dignify 
with the language of solemn assertion aspersions upon the politi- 
cal integrity of the Northern people, the wildest, the most pre- 



I I 6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONKLING. 

posterous, that have come out of the fury and licentiousness of 
partisan contests. 

In this connection there is one remark I want to make about 
war — war, whether it be waged in resistance of laws or for any- 
other purpose. In this material age, war is a very humdrum 
thing. The battles known to the crusaders, and sung by the 
Troubadours, have all been fought. War is no longer a question 
of personal valor or individual prowess; but a mere question of 
money — a question who can throw the most projectiles, who can 
indulge in the most iron and lead. It is no longer regulated by 
the laws of honor and chivalry, but entirely by the laws of trade. 

But, sir, had I that bad heart, that malevolence, which is sup- 
posed to exist among the Northern people toward their brothers 
in the South — -and which God knows I do not feel, nor do those 
I represent — did I desire to see secession drowned in its own 
blood, or wither and famish, I would crown every discontented 
State with instantaneous independence. There would be no more 
rendition of fugitives then; there would be no general Govern- 
ment to quell slave insurrections then; there would be no more 
Monroe doctrine then; no more national vows that European 
nationalities shall never interfere upon this continent; but hos- 
tility to slavery, death rather than expansion, would become a 
leading policy of all nations, whether transatlantic or adjacent. 
A slaveholding confederacy would cast out its shoe at its peril 
over one foot of land beyond its present limits capable of yield- 
ing any product that man can eat or any fabric that man can wear. 

Confining my view to the State executives who have become 
actors in treason, and to the people, be they many or few, who 
have raised the standard of rebellion, I care not in what State, I 
have no compromise to offer, no terms to talk about; none, until 
they return to their allegiance, haul down their palmettos and 
pelicans, doff their cockades, and wear, as we wear, not the livery 
of treason, but the garb of citizenship and submission to the laws. 
The people of the State of New York believe in this Govern- 
ment as their fathers made it. They believe in it, not as a mere 
commercial league, whose material advantages they can calculate, 
and whose value they can weigh in golden scales. To them it is 



A WORD-PAINTING. 



117 



something more. They cherish it for its memories of martyrs, 
of heroes and of statesmen; they cherish it for its wisdom, grand 
with the revelations, and pregnant with the experience of buried 
centuries and epochs; they cherish it for the shelter it affords 
against the tempest which, without it, would burst upon this con- 
tinent in an hour; above all, they cherish it for its promises unre- 
deemed, its mission uncompleted, its destiny unfulfilled. In the 
world-trod streets of our great metropolis sixty-four languages 
and dialects are spoken. In this chaos of voices are breathed 
the prayers and muttered the curses of the exile, the refugee, the 
emancipated of all Governments and all climes. Of this motley 
group of tongues there is not one — no, not one — without an 
anathema to blast the man who would overthrow free institutions 
in this continent of ours. Among the vocabularies of them all, 
in which shall be found the word whereby to call so infinite a 
crime ? It is a deed without a known name. 

In the debate concerning the Additional Rev- 
enue Bill, Mr. Conkling- said : 

* * * I am opposed to a gigantic scheme of this sort 
for laying with inconsiderate haste, upon the States of this 
Union, a direct annual tax of $50,000,000. Such, in substance, 
is this bill. I am opposed to a scheme attempting to do it by 
imposing so enormous ft burden chiefly upon the rural districts, 
upon agricultural property, excluding entirely from its operation 
the immense active and dormant capital which falls, not under 
the designation of real estate or land, but belongs to the personal 
property of the country. I protest against taxing farms, until 
everything else is taxed. A farmer who makes four per cent, 
from his farm does well. Why should he be visited with taxes 
which others escape ? 

******* 

In declaring against this measure I want to be quite sure, in 
justice to myself and to the people I represent, that no man 
fastens upon me a false issue; that no one shall be able to sus- 
pect that I am unwilling or unready to vote any necessary tax, 
even to the uttermost. No, sir, I am ready to vote all the money 




I l8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

needed to throttle rebellion, to trample to death this painted liz- 
ard called secession, and to punish this great experiment of per- 
fidy so severely that never again will its like be attempted on this 
continent 

Mr. Conkling voted upon a very important mat- 
ter February 28, 1861. It was against the pro- 
\ posed thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, 
-^Tu-^l which provided that 

^v a)^, ^ '~ no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will 

v^ Wi ' , authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, 

• V^ ^ 'within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, includ- 

» ^ ing that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said 

I T'Y State. 

The border States of course demanded this 
amendment to the Constitution; but its passage 
and ratification would have had the effect of mak- 
ing slavery permanent in the nation, so far as any 
power of the general Government was concerned. 

Two-thirds of the members of each House voted 
for the amendment. It was supported by many 
Republicans as a peace-offering to the South. Of 
the 117 Republican Representatives, but sixty-five 
voted nay. Roscoe Conkling opposed the ineasu7'e, 
and among those who stood with him were Anson 
Burlingame, Owen Lovejoy, Thaddeus Stevens 
and Elihu B. Washburne. 

Mr. Conkling could not have done otherwise 
than to vote against this amendment. He could 
obey offensive laws which rested upon a pro-slavery 



THE MORRILL TARIFF ACT. I In 

Constitution until they were repealed, for that was 
the duty of a good citizen; but he would not con- 
sent to rivet new fetters on the slave, nor deprive 
the nation of its sovereign right to alter the Con- 
stitution. 

As the Southern Representatives withdrew, the 
Republican majority increased. Important and 
much-debated measures were then considered in 
rapid succession. Roscoe Conkling voted for 
most of the amendments to the Morrill tariff bill. 
The Republicans then passed this measure, as well 
as bills for the admission of Kansas and the or- 
ganization of other Territories. It may be stated 
that the Morrill Tariff Act of March 2, 1861, was 
the beginning of the era of protection under Re- 
publican auspices, and may be called the basis of 
the present (1889) tariff. This lav/ authorized war 
loans, the issue of United States notes, and com- 
mitted the party to the principle that the repub- 
Hc is a nation and not a league, and that it is 
supreme within its own constitutional sphere. 

Early in the year 1861 a triumvirate of Repub- 
licans assumed to designate candidates for the 
offices which President Lincoln was about to fill 
in the Oneida district. To accomplish this end 
they went to Washington and called upon their 
Representative, handing him their list of candi- 
dates to endorse for appointment. Mr. Conkling 



I 20 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONKLING. 

read it carefully, and, seeing that it contained un- 
desirable names, he replied: "Gentlemen, when 
I need your assistance in making the appoint- 
ments in our district, I shall let you know." 

Keenly feeling the rebuke the visitors left. This 
retort was regarded by some of his friends as 
indiscreet, and as the seed that years afterward 
ripened into an unfortunate division of the Re- 
publican party. I He considered himself personally 
responsible for the incumbents of the national of- 
fices, and he would not allow others to foist inca- 
pable appointees upon him. It is probable that, had 
Mr. Conklinof exercised some conciliation, and 
taken counsel with the political friends who had 
helped to insure his election, all of the bitter feel- 
ing that followed might have been avoided. The 
consequence was that some of his political friends 
became his enemies. This incident is an example 
of how a sharp reply, however justifiable, may 
lead to disagreeable results. The world can best 
judge whether Mr. Conkling acted from a high 
sense of honor in the selection of public officers in 
the twenty-first Congressional district, and wheth- 
er, on the occasion mentioned, his political allies 
really misunderstood his motives. In either case 
the effect was practically the same, and the Re- 
publican party suffered in consequence. 



i86c^i86i. 
CHAPTER VIII. 

THE BUDGE MURDER TRIAL. 

T N order to show how versatile a man Mr. Conk- 
Hng was, and how his active intellect could 
grasp a case entirely different from anything he 
had tried before, as well as the great absorbing 
and assimilating power of his mind, we shall now 
proceed to give a brief history of the first of a 
series of his important legal causes. 

This case was the trial of the Rev. Henry 
Budge for murder, wherein Mr. Conkling became 
a quasi physician and saved his client's neck. 

Mr. Budge appears to have been a hard-working 
traveling clergyman, who occasionally labored as 
a farm hand for his neighbors so as to eke out his 
scanty salary of $600, taking quietly the reproaches 
of his wife for doinof such humble work. 

In the month of December, 1859, Mrs. Budge 
had been sleeping alone for a week in what was 
called the parlor bedroom, while her husband slept 
with one of his boys in another room. 

On Sunday morning, December 11, 1859, their 



122 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

little daughter Priscilla went to carry a cup of tea 
to her mother, and found her lying upon her bed 
with her throat cut. She immediately ran scream- 
ing to her father, who sent for the neighbors, while 
he strove to comfort his weeping children. The 
nearest coroner was sent for, and an inquest was 
held, which resulted in a verdict of suicide. 

This would most probably have been the end of 
the whole affair had not gossip grown into scan- 
dal and scandal into slander. 

When Mr. Budge accepted the call to the church 
at Port Leyden, the congregation was, unfortu- 
nately, divided on some question concerning the 
title to the church, and his call, coming of course 
from the larger party, made the smaller one his bit- 
ter enemies without any fault on his part. This feel- 
ing was increased in the case of some of them by 
his resistance to an attempt on their part to de- 
duct from his small salary the results of a dona- 
tion party, he contending, very properly, that it 
was ridiculously inconsistent to call a donation a 
payment. 

With that curious perverseness that sometimes 
shows itself in human nature, the more he put 
himself in the right the more they hated him, and 
the more bitter they became against him, so that 
after they had begun by saying that perhaps his 
wife did not commit suicide, they went on to 



MR. BUDGE IS PERSECUTED. I 2 1 

whisper that he might perhaps have desired to get 
rid of her; and, as the Upas growth of evil spread 
itself among them, they declared openly that he 
was guilty. They also caused to be printed in Al- 
bany a pamphlet and a long poem in wretched 
doggerel accusing him publicly of immorality as 
well as crime. 

The quiet pastor was at length aroused and 
found friends who were willing to aid him in 
refuting these calumnies. He commenced an ac- 
tion for libel against Caleb Lyon, one of his assail- 
ants and the reputed author of the doggerel poem, 
while his elder brother, L. R. Lyon, a wealthy 
land-owner, was a staunch supporter of the clergy- 
man. 

This action aroused his enemies to fury. The- 
succeeded in having another coroner's inques 
held, by the same coroner, four months afte- 
the first. They had the body exhumed and ai 
elaborate examination made by a Doctor John 
Swmburne, to whom they had communicated 
their view of the case, and who seems to have 
foolishly attempted to bend the facts to suit their 
fancies. The animus of the coroner, who was one 
of Mr. Budge's enemies in the church, was suf- 
ficiently shown by the fact that on the evening of 
April 27, i860, while the second inquest was 
going on, when Mr. Budge's counsel at eleven p. m. 



124 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK'LING. 

requested an adjournment, it was refused ; and 
when, later on, at one o'clock in the morning-, Mr. 
Budge stated that he was sick and begged to be 
allowed to go to bed, the coroner refused, saying 
thgit he must remain, because without him the in- 
quest could not go on, and thus forced him to re- 
main until nearly four o'clock that morning. 

This second coroner's jury found that Mr. 
Budge was guilty of murder, and he was held for 
trial. 

It was at this point that Mr. Conkling came 
into the case, and a most difficult and complicated 
case it was. 

The enemies of his client were so bitter and so 

aggressive that they had forced their quarrel into 

he school board as well as into politics. A cir- 

ular is in existence declaring that every one who 

oted for a certain school commissioner must be 

pointed at as upholding the murderer Budge ; and 

also that all good Democrats should do all they 

could to insure his conviction. In consequence 

of this a change of venue was secured from 

Lewis County to Oneida County. A jury was 

there impanelled without much difficulty and the 

trial began at Rome in August, 1861. 

The theory of the prosecution was that Mrs. 
Budge had been suffocated or strangled by her 
husband and her throat then cut by him, and Dr. 



AIDED B V DR. ALONZO CLARK. 



125 



Swinburne was their main dependence to prove 
the truth of this. 

It was certainly a bold thing for a lawyer to 
undertake to fight a physician of fair standing 
upon his own ground, but Mr. Conkling was con- 
vinced of the innocence of his client, and he was 
not convinced of the correctness of the inferences 
drawn by Dr. Swinburne in his testimony on the 
coroner's inquest. The more powerful and em- 
bittered his client's enemies appeared, the more 
intense became his determination to rout them all. 

From the moment that he took charo^e of the 
case he commenced a profound study of the 
lungs, so as to meet the charge of suffocation. 
He obtained the very efficient aid of Dr. Alonzo 
Clark, of New York, who made another examina- 
tion of the body of Mrs. Budge, from which the 
right lung and other portions had been removed 
by Dr. Swinburne, and carried by him to his 
home, as he said, for closer examination. 

Mr. Conkling had a marvelous power of rapidly 
absorbing knowledge, and he studied up this case 
with an intense earnestness that enabled him to 
badger and to baffle Dr. Swinburne, who must 
have felt rather dubious about some of the state- 
ments to which he had committed himself. 

So very much in earnest was Mr. Conkling that 
he procured a body for dissection and had dis- 



126 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

sected under his eye the parts of the body that 
he wished to study. 

He began the defence by appeahng, first of all, 
to common sense, which must have had great in- 
fluence on the jury. He showed that in a small 
bedroom, seven feet by nine, on the morning of 
Sunday, December ii, 1859, Mrs. Budge was 
found lying on her back on the bed, with her 
throat cut from ear to ear. This bed was four 
feet, four inches wide, and of the usual length. 
It stood in one corner of the room, with the head 
close up against one wall, and the right side close 
up against another, so that the only access to it 
was by the foot and the left side. 

The head was slightly turned toward the right. 
The bed-clothes were pulled up smoothly to the 
upper part of the chest. The arms were on the 
outside of the bed-clothes. The left arm was 
bent so that the hand rested on the breast. The 
right arm was extended at the right side, and un- 
der it was lying a half-open razor, between the, 
elbow and the wrist, but more toward the wrist. 
The face was calm like that of one sleeping. 
There was some slight spattering of blood on the 
two pillows ; and two slight marks, as if of bloody 
fingers, were on the face near the nose and on the 
right pillow. 

Mr. Conkline called attention to the fact that 



THE THEOR Y OF THE PROSECUTION. I 2 7 

this state of affairs was utterly inconsistent with 
the theory of the prosecution. He quoted from 
the medical books to show that in all cases of at- 
tempted suffocation or strangulation there is im- 
mediately instinctive and violent resistance. He 
proved also, by the same authorities, that a very 
weak woman in such cases is capable of great re- 
sistance even against a strong man. l^-Ir. Budge 
was a slightly built man, weighing certainly not 
above thirty pounds more than his wife, and she 
could easily have resisted him. Here, however, 
there was not the slightest appearance of any 
struggle. Her placid countenance showed that 
she had died suddenly, and that it was a painless 
death. 

The next argument of the prosecution was about 
the wound. This was five inches in its curved 
length and three inches in a straight line. It be- 
gan under the left ear, cutting down directly to 
the back-bone, and coming out under the right 
ear, with a more sloping cut at a point about half 
an inch lower, as to level, than where it entered. 

The prosecution contended that no suicide could 
make so deep a cut. This was soon refuted by 
the medical authorities, which showed that a per- 
son strong enough to raise twenty-five pounds 
could easily make such a cut. They also con- 
tended that anyone lying on his, back could not 



I 28 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

make such a cut, because his elbow would come 
ag-ainst the bed so as to prevent it. 

Mr. Conkling called the attention of the jury to 
the fact that any one of them could, by placing 
himself on his back upon a bed, take a tooth-brush, 
or even his thumb, and prove immediately the pos- 
sibility of such an act. 

Dr. Swinburne's strongest point was that the 
condition of the lungs in the post-mortem exami- 
nation gave conclusive proof of suffocation. Here 
most probably he felt himself secure, not thinking 
that any mere lawyer would venture to trespass 
on his ov/n professional ground and try conclu- 
sions with him in his own specialty. He little 
knew the man he had to deal with. 

Mr. Conkling, upon cross-examination, tested 
with him his chain of evidence, showing that many 
of its links were all unsound, and that its holding 
power was imaginary. He proved by medical ex- 
perts that the left lung, which liad not been taken 
away, was not congested. He then called the at- 
tention of the court and jury to the previous testi- 
mony of Dr. Swinburne before the coroner, in which 
he had stated that in all cases of suffocation both 
lungs were congested. He showed, also, by med- 
ical testimony, that the blood and serum found in 
the pleural cavities behind the lungs, instead of 
being evidence of suffocation, were simply the re- 



DR. SWINBURNE'S TESTIMONY, 



129 



suit of post-mortem drainage through the tissues. 
The carelessness (to put it mildly) of Dr. Swin- 
burne was shown when he stated that the average 
specific gravity of a healthy lung was 700. This 
he was afterward obliged to change to 418. In 
one place he says that the absence of bruises is 
untrue, yet in another place he says that the skin, 
when examined by him the second time (four 
months after death), was so mildewed that all 
traces of bruises or abrasions were necessarily ob- 
scured. He also testified that the trapezius muscle 
was cut. Mr. Conkling proved that the razor did 
not come within half an inch of it. 

He testified that blood moves in the arteries at 
the rate of one foot per second. Mr. Conkling 
proved that the surface of a cross-section of the 
aorta was equal to one square inch ; that one and 
a half ounces of blood were given out at each 
pulsation; that there were seventy-two pulsations 
(average) in a minute, giving one and one-fifth 
for each second; that one and a half ounces of 
blood took up the space of two and a half cubic 
inches. One pulsation and one-fifth would there- 
fore give (f +-5-off=-l+To=fl) tI- ounces of blood, 
and, as one and a half ounces of blood equal two 
and a half cubic inches, \% ounces would occupy 
a space of three inches for one pulsation, so that 
in place of the blood advancing at the rate of 



130 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

twelve inches per second, Mr. Conkling proved 
mathematically to the court and jury that it ad- 
vanced only three inches per second. This little 
investigation may serve to show with what pains- 
taking minuteness Mr. Conkling had studied this 
case. 

In this way the testimony of Dr. Swinburne, 
who was the main-stay of the prosecution, was so 
thoroughly riddled and torn to pieces, that Judge 
Allen, though a personal friend of Henry A. Fos- 
ter, the special counsel to the District- Attorney, 
felt compelled, at the close of the testimony on 
the part of the prosecution, to declare the evidence 
so entirely insufficient that it was not worth while 
for the jury to retire. When they were polled, each 
declared the accused not guilty on all the counts 
in the indictment, and Mr. Conkling had the great 
gratification of feeling that his unremitting study 
of medicine, as well as his experience and ability 
as a lawyer, had saved an innocent man from the 
hands of such desperately embittered foes. 

The libel trial then came on in Herkimer County 
and lasted for three weeks. The defence pleaded 
justification, so that, to a great extent, the same 
ground was gone over. Caleb Lyon, who was the 
author of the wretched doggerel poem that has 
been spoken of, and who had scattered broadcast 
through Herkimer County a libellous pamphlet. 



A GLOWING COMPLIMENT. I3I 

was found guilty, but, as he had previously been 
very popular in that county, the jury brought in 
a verdict for damages to the amount of only $200. 
The plaintiff's character was, however, fully vindi- 
cated, and his persecutors completely checked. 

On the murder trial Henry A. Foster, one of 
the prosecutors, had shown so much fierce ani- 
mosity against the accused that Mr. Conkling, 
who could hit hard when he chose, compared him 
to " a bull-dog snuffing for blood around a slaugh- 
ter-house." Mr. Foster is said to have taken intense 
offence at this, and never forgave Mr. Conkling 
until some years after, when he procured Mr. Fos- 
ter's nomination as one of the judges of the Su- 
preme Court. 

It is said that several years after these trials 
took place, when Mr. Conkling visited Lewis 
County, there still appeared to be a feeling on the 
part of some persons against him for having saved 
Mr. Budge. 

Dr. Alonzo Clark aided Mr. Conkling very mate- 
rially, and sat up one entire night just before trial- 
day with him, answering his questions, and giving 
him necessary information, which he absorbed 
with such avidity and rapidity that Dr. Clark said 
afterward to a friend : " Mr. Conkling learned in a 
few days what it took me thirty years to find out." 

At a stated meeting of the New York Academy 



132 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

of Medicine, held December 18, 1861, Dr. Clark 
read a very careful analysis of this celebrated case, 
from a medical point of view. This was after- 
ward published, making an octavo pamphlet of 
twenty-six closely printed pages, which is still 
quite interesting to many persons. 
. ;^Mr. Conkling had previously been, for a lay- 
man, unusually well read in anatomy. This stood 
him in good stead when these trials came on, and 
their effect was to give him such a taste for med- 
ical science as to make him, as his friends said, 
"half a doctor." 

After his successful defence of the Rev. Henry 
Budge, Roscoe Conkling was retained in nearly 
every important criminal case until the summer of 
1867. Being then a Senator of the United States, 
he began to draw the line against appearing for 
clients who had been indicted. 

During the next six years he defended several 
persons, who were charged with arson and murder. 
He also defended a soldier for alleged desertion, 
on a writ of habeas corpus, and prosecuted the Act- 
ing Provost-Marshal General of the Western Divi- 
sion of New York for fraud and bribery. These 
cases will be described in the proper place. They 
were, perhaps, the greatest triumphs of Mr. Conk- 
ling's legal life prior to his resignation from the 
Senate in 1881. 



i86i-i862. 
CHAPTER IX. 

THE THIRTY -SEVENTH CONGRESS A CONKLING REGI- 
MENT SPEECH ON THE BATTLE OF BALL's BLUFF 

GENERAL STONE — COLONEL BAKER GENERAL 

McCLELLAN. 

TT is well known that the first shot of the War 
of the Rebellion was fired upon Fort Sumter, 
April 12, 1 86 1. 

The President recognized promptly the condi- 
tion of civil war, and July 4, 1861, called the Thirty- 
seventh Congress into extra session. The object 
was to ecjuip an army for the emergency. Hap- 
pily there was in both Houses a strong Republitan 
majority, and many of the Democratic members 
favored the preservation of the Union. Henceforth 
the effective war measures, which were demanded, 
passed without tedious debate, although the peace 
Democrats injected terms of negotiation and com- 
promise into all the bills and resolutions. 

The delegation from New York included Fred- 
erick A. and Roscoe Conkling, both of whom on 
the opening day answered to their names. On 



134 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



the election of a Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, Roscoe Conkhng voted first for Fran- 
cis P. Blair, of Missouri, who, on the first ballot,! 
received forty against seventy-one for Galusha A. 
Grow, of Pennsylvania, He then, in company 
with twenty-seven others, changed his vote from 
Mr. Blair to Mr. Grow, who, having received a 
majority (ninety votes), was duly elected Speaker.; 

The standing committees were announced July | 
6. Roscoe Conkling, who, as we have stated, had 
been a member of the Committee on the Districti 
of Columbia in the previous Congress, was pro- 
moted to the chairmanship, while his brother was 
appointed upon the Committee on Naval Affairs.! 
In the House were numerous vacant seats, but 
many members had served in the Thirty-sixth 
Congress. Among them were Thaddeus Stevens, 
Elihu B. Washburne, Alexander H. Rice, Samuel 
S. Cox, Owen Lovejoy, John F. Potter, William 
S. Holman, Justin S. Morrill, Reuben E. Fenton 
and Henry L. Dawes. 

Roscoe Conkling took an active part in the work 
of this extra session, not only as chairman of the 
Committee on the District of Columbia, which 
was now a very important one, but also as chair- 
man of a special committee to draft a bankrupt 

,i 
law. ! 

One of his first acts was to vote -in favor of a 



A GENERAL BANKRUPT LAW. 1 35 

resolution to expel John B. Clark, of Missouri, for 
having taken up arms against the Government of 
the United States. Soon afterward he introduced 
a bill " to establish an auxiliary watch for the pro- 
tection of public and private property in the city 
of Washington, and for other purposes." It was 
twice read, referred to the Committee on the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, and on the next legislative day 
the measure was called up and passed without a 
division. 

In his remarks upon this original bill, Mr. Conk- 
ling, replying to a question from a member, said 
that he was not aware that any similar measure 
had ever before been introduced. 

He offered a resolution, July 17, that a select 
committee of five members be appointed to report 
at the next session upon the subject of a general 
bankrupt law. It was agreed to without debate, 
and Mr. Conkling became the chairman. 

Roscoe Conkling had carefully studied the sub- 
ject of bankruptcy ; and he sent to England for 
the Report of Her Majesty's Co77imis si oners Ap- 
pointed to Enquire into the Fees, Funds ajtd Estab- 
lish'me7its of the Court of Bankruptcy; and the Op- 
erations of the Bankrupt Law Consolidation Act, 
1849. 

Mr. Conkling voted, July 17, against a resolu- 
tion to allow the Special Committee on Govern- 



136 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

ment Contracts to sit during the recess of Congress 
and to incur extraordinary expenses. He spoke at 
length upon this subject at the second session of 
the same Congress [April 29, 1862], and extracts 
from his speech will be given on a subsequent page. 
Here, as well as on many other occasions, his hand 
was raised against every one who appeared in the 
role of a jobber. 

On the same day Frederick A. Conkling took 
an active part in the debate upon the item of sugar 
in the Tariff bill. Later on Roscoe Conkling op- 
posed various provisions in the Additional Reve- 
nue bill. 

The regular session of this Congress began the 
second of December, 1861. Having been organ- 
ized at the extra session of July by the election of 
Galusha A. Grow as Speaker, the House at once 
proceeded to business. On the fifth instant the 
vacancies in the standing committees were filled. 

We have seen that Roscoe Conklinor was the 
chairman of one standing and one select commit- 
tee. 

In speaking of the Thirty-seventh Congress, 
Ben. Perley Poore, in his Kemi7iiscences says : 

" Roscoe Conkling, who had jnst entered upon the theatre of 
his future fame, commanded attention by his superb choice of 
words in debate, and by his wonderful felicity of expression and 
epigrammatic style." 



AN IMPOR TANT RESOL UTION. 1 3 7 

The House unanimously adopted, December 3, 
a resolution offered by Roscoe Conkling, request- 
ing " the Secretary of War, if not incompatible 
with the public interest, to report to this House 
whether any, and if any, what measures have been 
taken to ascertain who is responsible for the dis- 
astrous movement of our troops at Ball's Bluff." 

The following letter to the colonel of the Ninety- 
seventh New York Volunteers explains itself : 

Washington, Christmas Day, 1861. 

My Dear Colonel : The regiment you command has, I am 
informed, done me the honor to assume my name. A compli- 
ment so unexpected, bestowed upon me in my absence, and by so 
large a body of my fellow-citizens from different sections of the 
State, awakens, I need hardly say, lively and enduring emotions. 

Grateful as I am for unnumbered and undeserved marks of 
confidence and kindness showered upon me by the generous peo- 
ple of Oneida County, among them all there is scarcely one that 
I shall cherish longer than this token of approbation at once so 
spontaneous and expressive. 

A thousand men, who as winter approaches leave their homes 
for the camp, to defend on distant battle - fields the life and 
honor of their country, are inspired and consecrated by heroic 
purposes and unfaltering faith. Earnestness and sincerity abide 
with them, and they mean in seriousness all they say. When 
they inscribe a name upon their colors, they mean not a mere 
token of courtesy or friendship, nor simply to make the name less 
humble than it was before; but they adopt it because they con- 
sider it associated with some idea. In this case that idea is a 
vigorous and unconditional prosecution of the war till the Union 
is restored and the Government acknowledged on the Gulf of 
Mexico as much as on the river St, Lawrence. It is the idea 
that whoever and whatever stands in the way of national success 
must go down before the advancing columns of the Union. 



I ^8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The colors you carry will never be disgraced; they will be 
borne forward by men many of whom I have long known and re- 
spected as neighbors and friends, and though the regiment, how- 
ever called, would have been an object of interest and pride with 
me, I shall now watch its career with double solicitude, its ad- 
vancement with double pleasure. 

Do me the favor to present my warm acknowledgments to the 
regiment and reserve them to yourself. 

I remain your friend, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

Col. Chas. Wheelock, Boonville, N. Y. 

Roscoe Conkling's next conspicuous appearance 
before the House is a chapter in the history of the 
war. It was unexpected and electric in its effect. 
The bloody blunder at Ball's Bluff had disgraced 
our arms and carried mourning into many of the 
best families in the country. As already stated, 
a resolution of the House had inquired of the Sec- 
retary of War if measures had been taken to ascer- 
tain who was responsible for the disaster. He 
returned answer that the General in Chief of the 
army was of the opinion that inquiry into the mat- 
ter " would at this time be injurious to the public 
service." Roscoe Conklinof determined to fasten 
responsibility for the error on the author, and to 
establish at once the supremacy of the House, the 
representatives of the people, over the military 
agents who were conducting the people's war. 
Under a question of privilege, he rose in his place 
January 6, 1S62, and presented the evasion by the 



THE BA TTLE OF BA LL' S BL UFF. I 3 9 

Secretary of War of the resolution of inquiry, as a 
breach of the privileges of the House. Before he 
sat down he had told, with marvelous power and 
pathos, the story of the shameful and murderous 
blunder. The House was electrified by the speech, 
and moved to passionate resentment. The com- 
manders in the armies took instant notice, from the 
speech and the proceedings, that the day of re- 
sponsibility at last had come. 
Roscoe Conkling said: 

On the second day of the present session a resolution was adopt- 
ed by the House in relation to the battle at Ball's Bluff. The 
resolution proposed no investigation whatever. It simply re- 
quested the Secretary of War to inform the House whether any, 
and if any, what, measures had been taken to ascertain who was 
responsible for a disastrous battle. It did not demand the name 
of the person, nor even ask whether there was any such person. 

[The resolution and answer are found at the 
end of the speech. — A. R. C] 

******* 

I was about to say that if the resolution had called upon the 
War Department to disclose the name of the person culpable, and 
an answer had come here, that it would not be compatible with 
the public interest to disclose the name, the answer might have 
been preposterous, but still it would have been an answer in form, 
and responsive. But here comes a communication professing to 
be an answer, which neither answers the interrogatory, nor in- 
forms us that in the opinion of any person it would be injurious 
to the public service to answer it. The reply does not, indeed, 
refer at all, or relate at all, to the point of the inquiry. To a 
question whether a particular thing has been done, the Adjutant- 



140 LIFE AND LETTERS OFROSCOE CONK LING. 

General reports that, in the opinion of the General-in-Chief, it 
would be injurious to do some other thing. 

But this is no ordinary matter. The resolution relates to a 
great national concern ; it relates to an event which I believe to 
be the most atrocious military murder ever committed in our his- 
tory as a people. * * * It relates to something more: it relates 
to a blunder so gross that all men can see it, and no man has ever 
dared deny or defend it — a blunder which, besides position, be- 
sides defeat, besides arms and munitions of war, cost us confess- 
edly nine hundred and thirty men, many of them the very pride 
and flower of the States from which they came. 

******* 

Now, sir, if there is any objection to this, if there is any objec- 
tion to our knowing whether the twenty-first of October has been 
passed over as a mere ripple in the current of events, then, in the 
name of my people, I demand that those whose business it is to 
answer should stand up and stand out and say so. * * * 

* * * We have a committee appointed to investigate the con- 
duct of the war, and if it is known, and known at this time, that 
the disaster at Ball's Bluff is likely to be embraced in their inqui- 
ry, facts and witnesses will be presented to the committee. 

The House is no doubt aware that the battle of Ball's Bluff, 
like many other things, has been made the subject of an issue 
between the regular army and the volunteers. Brigadier-General 
Stone, who was at the time commanding the division from which 
the detachment came, which fought the battle, or attempted to 
fight it, is an officer of the regular army, and Colonel Baker, to 
whom, after a time, the command, or a part of the command, was 
assigned, was a volunteer. The friends of these two officers have 
indulged in much angry controversy as to which should bear the 
blame; and on the one side the cause has been espoused as if its 
appropriate office was to fasten some stigma on the volunteer ser- 
vice, and to determine certain questions of precedence and merit 
between West Point and the volunteers for the Union. A writer 
in the New York Times stated, some time ago, that the friends of 
Colonel Baker would move an investigation, but that they had 
better not, for if they did the friends of General Stone would re- 



GENERAL STONE AND COLONEL BAKER. 141 

taliate, and make it recoil upon Baker and damage his memory. 
Mr. Speaker, I have no sympathy with this controversy to indulge 
in here. I have no patience with it as an obstacle to investi- 
gation; I have no toleration for it as far as it has been used to 
trade upon the affections and to hush and scare off, with the 
friends of either party, discussion and inquiry. The effect on 
either of these officers, or on both of them, of disclosing the truth, 
ought not in my judgment to weigh one feather against an inves- 
tigation being had. Hit whom it may, I believe the truth should 
be known. Suppose its revelation shall shorten the plume of a 
dead Senator — what then? Is that a reason, in a great public 
concern like this, why we should hush investigation, or falsify 
the truth of history? Suppose, on the other hand, it turns out 
that a brigadier-general, bred at West Point, an officer of the reg- 
ular army, holding the acting position of a major-general, com- 
manding a division containing thousands of our countrymen, 
charged with their safety, their honor and their lives — suppose, I 
say, it turns out that such a brigadier-general is a martinet and 
not a soldier; suppose he turns out to be half-way, either in his 
soldiership or his loyalty, is that a reason why investigation 
should be muzzled or throttled out of regard to his feelings or 
the feelings of his caste? Shall we proclaim indulgence for ignor- 
ance and incompetency, immunity for barbarous negligence, si- 
lence for military crimes, even though a revelation of the truth 
would soil the glittering plumage of the highest officer in the 
armies of the republic? No, sir: whoever is responsible for that 
fatal field, if he yet lives, ought to be nightly on his knees im- 
ploring forgiveness for the mighty murder he there committed. 
If Baker did it, " 'twas a grievous fault, and grievously hath 
Baker answered it." If Stone did it, he bears a weight of guilt 
greater, far greater, than many a man has atoned for with his life, 
who suffered under the judgment of military tribunals, whose 
moderation and impartiality have never been denied. What is 
the personal fate or the personal fame of a dozen generals when 
compared with the preservation, the security, the maintenance, of 
that great army now standing in the field? 

******* 
I have no doubt, sir, that results of this sort sometimes occur 



142 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK' LING. 

when human foresight cannot prevent them; but when they occur 
from gross negligence or ignorance, and we all know it, I say it 
behooves us to investigate them, and hold them up, in order that 
we may see round and round, who is responsible for them. If 
we cannot have indemnity for the past, in the name of humanity 
let us have security for the future! If we are to preserve the 
military principle at all, let us preserve the whole of it. If not, 
introduce into the army the democratic principle, and when an 
order is given, put it to a vote whether it shall be obeyed or not; 
but if orders are to be implicitly obeyed, let us have responsibility, 
rigid responsibility, on the part of those who give them. 

Now, sir, let me look a few moments at the battle of Ball's 
Bluff, in order to see whether those who managed it exercised 
that care and caution which the law exacts of the pilot of a ship, 
of the engineer who runs a railroad train, of the captain of a 
steamboat carrying passengers; or whether it was managed with 
an absence of care and skill, with a reckless disregard of ordinary 
prudence. 

Thus Mr. Conkling described the battle: 

On the twenty-first of October, Leesburg, in the State of Vir- 
ginia, was occupied by insurgents. The force with which they held 
it amounted to not less than five or six thousand men. At the same 
time Poolesville, in the State of Maryland, was occupied by Union 
forces and was the headquarters of a brigadier-general. Between 
these two positions, thus occupied, there rolled a swift and swollen 
river, with an island in the channel, nearest the Maryland side, 
three miles in length and two hundred yards across. On the 
same side of the river with Leesburg, and within a day's march of 
that place, lay General McCall, commanding a division contain- 
ing fifteen regiments, which marched fully eleven thousand men. 
If Leesburg were to be attacked, or if a reconnoissance in force 
were to be made in that direction, one of the first wonders in this 
case is that the work should have been assigned to General Stone's 
division, divided as it was from the scene of action by a great 
river — indeed, by two great rivers^when the division of General 
McCall was within a day's march of the spot, with neither river, 
mountain nor barrier to be traversed. Those who, stimulated 



THE BA TTLE-FIELD. 



14: 



by the curiosity not unnatural at a time like this, have refreshed 
their military history, or dipped into military books, or picked up 
the current smattering of military knowledge, have not failed to 
observe that a river unbridged and unfordable is regarded as one 
of the most formidable and perilous obstacles to military advance. 
Of all the barriers not absolutely impassable, nothing — if ordi- 
nary sources of information are to be relied upon — is to be so much 
dreaded by an attacking army, so much to be shunned at any cost, 
as a deep, rapid stream, v/ithout wharves or bridges, and this 
even when means of floating transportation are abundant and pre- 
pared. Common sense has so much to do with this that any man 
who has ever seen artillery move, may without presumption as- 
sume to know and comprehend it. 

Another fact which a civilian may be allowed to state is that 
an army or detachment attempting to cross a stream of this sort, 
in the face of an enemy, should be provided not only with means 
of transportation sufficient to throw it over to the attack, but to 
bring it off, and bring it off expeditiously and securely in case of 
a defeat. A pontoon train, if an intrenched bridge cannot be had, 
a flotilla of bateaux, boats, rafts, something, is the very least, if 
we may rely on ordinary authorities, which will suffice to meet 
the requirements of common prudence. But in this case two 
rivers seem not to have been considered of much account in hin- 
dering the advance of an army; they were held of importance so 
slight that a division lying on the fighting side of the river was 
not brought into requisition at all, not even to protect the cross- 
ing and the landing, nor to cover a retreat; but the whole work 
was assigned to the trans-Potomac division of General Stone. 

The movement was not an unexpected or impulsive one. On 
the contrary, crossing the river thereabouts, and crossing at or 
about that time, had occupied for days the attention of officers 
and men. The landing-place had been selected before the battle 
day, for on the day before several hundreds of the Massachu- 
setts Fifteenth and Twentieth had been thrown over to the island, 
and from the island to the bluff. The crossing-place was one of 
the most remarkable — confessedly one of the most dangerous — 
that could have been possibly selected. The landing-place was a 
bank of clay ten or fifteen feet high, abrupt, almost perpendicu- 



144 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

lar, surmounted by a rugged bluff one hundred or one hundred 
and fifty feet in height. 

The region around about was what lumbermen would call a 
*' wooden country." Timber grew in great abundance in every 
direction. Within twelve miles of the crossing-place was a saw- 
mill. * * * Round about this mill, on the railroad, and piled on 
the canal, was an abundance of timber, round, square and sawed. 
What could have been done with it, we all know,and we all know 
how quickly it would have been done. VVe know what could have 
been done if nobody but Massachusetts had been there. Not to 
know that would be to forget that when General Butler called 
upon theworkingmen of a Massachusetts regiment to step forward, 
the whole regiment advanced, and that in the regiment were found 
a plenty of men who could sail the. Ironsides, and build and run a 
locomotive engine. Boats and rafts enough to float thousands 
could have been put afloat in a few hours, and a bridge would not, 
I am mformed, have been the work of more than a day and a 

night. 

•3t ^{- * ^ * * * 

Two weeks before this, however, an order had been given to 
construct five flatboats and two skiffs — to construct them at 
Edwards's Ferry, a point in the river some four miles below. 
Three of those boats were brought up from Edwards's Ferry to 
this fatal crossing-place. Two of them were used in the channel 
between the Maryland shore and Harrison's Island, and one of 
them was used between the island and the bluff. And in this 
latter channel was also a single row-boat. These four boats, two 
in either channel, constituted the whole means of transportation 
upon which the expedition was based. 

■35- * * * * -X- -Jfr 

These boats were of sufficient capacity to carry about half a 
company, some thirty-five men each, and the average time occu- 
pied in crossing from Maryland to the island was about three- 
quarters of an hour, leaving the island and the remaining channel 
still to be traversed. The House will get some idea of the rapid- 
ity with which this transportation could be carried on, from the 
operations of the night before the day of which I am speaking. 
Before Colonel Baker is understood to have had command of the 



A TERRIBLE BLUNDER. 1 45 

expedition, Colonel Devens was ordered to cross four companies 
of the Massachusetts Fifteenth. He did cross them. He com- 
menced at two o'clock in the morning, and it was sunrise before 
he was ready to take up the line of march, showing that more than 
an hour was necessary for the purpose of throwing one company 
from the Maryland shore to Ball's Bluff. 

Colonel Baker's orders came to him about two o'clock in the 
morning and found him sleeping in his tent. He commenced 
his crossing at sunrise. Without any wharf to lie to, without any 
hawser or rope to stretch across the river, the embarkation and 
transportation of troops, cannon and munitions of war was of 
course a slow and tantalizing process. Eleven o'clock had come 
when only a commencement had been made. At this time a boat 
was found in the canal and measures were taken to transfer it to 
the river. Whether this was observed on the other side is only 
matter of speculation; but the time had come when it was too 
late to mend the matter or correct mistakes, for the rebel fire had 
opened upon the slender detachment which had crossed. From 
that time the boats began to pole back with the bleeding and the 
slain. The house on Harrison's Island had already become a 
hospital, and every room in it was occupied by wounded at)d dy- 
ing men. 

But still the crossing went on. Seventy-five hundred men, 
according to General Stone, were detailed for the expedition; but 
not more than seventeen or eighteen hundred men ever saw the 
field or crossed the river. Those who did cross crawled up the 
muddy, slippery bank of clay, and from there, by a winding path, 
they climbed to the summit of the bluff which lay beyond. The 
guns were dismounted, and dragged and lifted up with great 
difficulty and delay. All this hard and perilous ascent led to no 
field of fair fighting, but only to a trap, an ambush, a slaughter- 
pen, a Golgotha. The bluff was a mile in length up and down 
the river and the landing and ascent were made in the middle of 
it. Behind this point was a six-acre lot skirted by woods on 
three sides. Into this burial-ground, one by one, as the boat 
brought them over, went up the devoted seventeen hundred. 
Their steps, like tracks to the lion's den, all pointed in one direc- 
tion, from which there was never to be a return. Behind them 
10 



146 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

rolled a river deep, which could never be repassed. Before them, 
and surrounding them on every side, was a tree-sheltered and 
skulking foe of three or four times their number. Their move- 
ments had been watched from the start; the rebels had pre- 
pared for them a feast of death, and had calculated the number 
of guests who should partake of it. When that number had been 
poled and drifted over, the dreadful revelry commenced. It 
was the refinement of cruelty, and dealt exactly with its victims. 
They had been sent over too few to remain, and too many to re- 
turn — a larger number might have held the position, and dis- 
pensed with means of retreat; a smaller number might have 
escaped by the boats; but the seventeen hundred had only to 
stand fast and perish. 

Nobly did they fulfill their destiny. Desperate stubbornness 
and heroic courage served only to gild with tints of glory the 
bloody picture of their fate. 

In an hour, in less than an hour, the field was a hell of fire, 
raging from every side. The battle was lost before it had begun. 
It was from the outset a mere sacrifice, without a promise of suc- 
cess or a hope of escape. 

******* 

We all know the result. Those who did not die upon the field 
were forced down the steep bank behind them to the brink of the 
river. Here, to save their arms from the enemy, they threw them 
into the stream, and many sought, and more found, a watery 
grave. The last act of this terrible tragedy of blunders, if not 
the saddest, was the most sickening and appalling of them all. 
The flatboat, which by poling and drifting had been made to ply 
between the island and the bluff, was now laden with the mangled, 
the weary, and the dying — too heavily laden, and the quick and 
dead, in one struggling mass, went down together in that doleful 
river and never rose again. Tecsburg was illuminated that night, 
illuminated by parricides and rebels, and bloody treason added an- 
other laurel to Big Bethel, Bull Run, the blockade of the Potomac 
and the tame surrender of arms in the navy-yards and arsenals. 

Such, Mr. Speaker, was the battle of Ball's Bluff. Such it 
stands to-day upon the page of history. The chief mourners for 
that battle — those who suffered most severely in it — are the 



AN INVESTIGA TION IS DEMANDED. 1 47 

States of New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. To those 
States it was the battle of Cannae, for the very pride and flower 
of their young men were among its victims. No wonder that the 
army and the country burn with indignation at 

" The deep damnation of their taking off." 
* -jj * * * * * 

Let mismanagement and drowsiness tremble and wake up. 
Ball's Bluff cries aloud for scrutiny, and I hope the war commit- 
tee will think so, and probe it thoroughly, unrestrained by any 
statement that the public interest does not require it, come from 
what quarter it may. * * * At all events, we shall be safe in 
exposing and branding the author or authors of a monstrous mis- 
take, which has already been told in Gath and published in the 
streets of Askelon. 

* -j^ * * * * * 

We have had long chapters of accidents for which no one is 
blamed, though some one is to blame. Battles and positions given 
away, and no court-martial, no court of inquiry, no one shot, no 
one disgraced— nothing but promotions growing out of inglori- 
ous occurrences. My particular object to-day is to learn whether 
the military authorities have in any manner looked into the pro- 
ceedings of the twenty-first of October on the upper Potomac, 
and in-order to obtain that information I offer the following reso- 
lution: 

The Clerk read the resolution and answer, as 
follows: 

Whereas, on the second day of the session, this House adopted 
a resolution, of which the following Is a copy: 

''Resolved, That the Secretary of War be requested, if not 
incompatible with the public interest, to report to this House 
whether any, and if any, what, measures have been taken to as- 
certain who is responsible for the disastrous movement of our 
troops at Ball's Bluff;" 

And whereas on the sixteenth of December the Secretary of 
War returned an answer, whereof the following is a copy: 



148 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

War Department, December 12, 1861. 
Sir : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a resolution of 
the House of Representatives calling for certain information with regard 
to the disastrous movement of our troops at Ball's Bluff, and to transmit 
to you a report of the Adjutant-General of the United States Army, from 
which you will perceive that a compliance with the resolution, at this time 
would, in the opinion of the General-in-Chief, be injurious to the public 
service. Very respectfully, 

Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, 
Hon. G. A. Grow, Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

We omit the report. 

Therefore, 

Resolved, That the said answer is not responsive, nor satisfac- 
tory to the House, and that the Secretary be directed to return a 
further answer. 

The resolution was further debated at length by 
Messrs. Richardson, Edwards, Crittenden, Ros- 
COE Conkling, Vallandigham, Lovejoy, Wick- 
LiFFE, Dunn and Stevens. 

Motions to amend and lay on the table were 
lost and the resolution passed without amend- 
ment by the following vote : Yeas, seventy-nine ; 
Nays, fifty-four. 

This speech was said at the time to have been a 
" pivot" in the oratorical life of Roscoe Conkling. 
His eulogists state that it gave him a national rep- 
utation as an orator and thereafter he never 
lacked an audience. It was widely commented 
upon in the public press, and it was said that the 
description of the battle was wonderfully accu- 



GENERAL McCLELLAN'S STATEMENT. 1 49 

rate, seeing that it came from one who had not 
been an eye-witness. 

Concerning Mr. ConkHng's severe criticism of 
the conduct of General Stone, the latter applied 
to the aide-de-camp of General McClellan (as 
likely to be familiar with the wishes of his supe- 
rior), to learn if he should demand a court of in- 
quiry. A negative reply was promptly given. He 
then asked if he should prepare a statement cor- 
recting the supposed mistakes in the speech of 
Roscoe Conkling. The answer came, " Write 
nothing ; say nothing ; keep quiet." 

In McClellan s Ozvn Story the General, on page 
190, says, after giving two pages of the true story 
of the affair of Ball's Bluff : 

" I have gone thus much into detail, because at the time I was 
much criticised and blamed for this unfortunate affair, while I 
was in no sense responsible for it." 

This is probably a reference to Mr. Conkling's 
Congressional speech. 

In opposition to a scheme appropiating $37,000 
to send a commission to the London Exposition, 
Roscoe Conkling said : 

* * * Now, sir, for one I am opposed to the original 
bill . . . We have a world's fair now in session on this con- 
tinent. We are all on exhibition before the world, and we are 
within the sight and within the hearing of and undergoing the 
examination of all Christendom. There is a competition going 
on here, a grapple for the mastery of fine arts and in the arts 



150 LIFE AND LETTERS 01^ ROSCOE CONKLING. 

that are not so fine. ... I believe, sir, that there is a 
theatre here abundant for the display of every species of national 
proficiency at this time, affording an opportunity to record, high 
up as any man desires to see it recorded in the temple of fame, 
and on the page of history, America's capacity. * * * 

He introduced, February 13, a resolution to 
print 5,000 extra copies of the House bill "to es- 
tablish a uniform system of bankruptcy through- 
out the United States." 

This was the bill prepared by the Select Com- 
mittee of which he was chairman, and which was 
appointed at the extra session of this Congress. 
Much to his regret the bill did not become a law. 

It may be added that no bankrupt law was en- 
acted until the second session of the Thirty-ninth 
Congress, when Mr. Conkling urged the adoption 
of it. 



i862. 
CHAPTER X. 

THE LEGAL-TENDER ACT. 

"P OSCOE CONKLING'S opposition to the 
■^ legal-tender act of 1862 is a notable inci^ 
dent in his career. His connection with the bill 
may properly be narrated here. When the War 
of the Rebellion began, he soon discovered that 
its successful ending must needs prove a matter 
of finance. He knew that the Government must 
emit bills of credit, but the question was, How 
should the issue of paper money be made ? 

There was then no national bank currency, nor 
was there either gold or silver available in the 
federal Treasury to carry on the war for the Union. 
Hence the wherewithal to prosecute the war had 
to be obtained upon the credit of the Government 
or by taxation. The most convenient form of 
credit which the authorities of the United States 
could use in crushing the Rebellion was a funda- 
ble legal-tender currency. It was a loan to the 
Government without interest, as well as a national 
currency, which was greatly needed for small dis- 



152 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

bursements during the urgent necessities of the 
civil war. 

On the thirtieth day of December, 1861, Elbridge 
G. Spaulding, who had been State Treasurer of 
New York, introduced a bill "To authorize the is- 
sue of Treasury notes payable on demand." It 
was twice read, referred to the Committee of 
Ways and Means, and ordered to be printed. It 
was known as House Bill No. 182. A long de- 
bate followed, in which Roscoe Conkling engaged. 

On January 7, 1862, the Spaulding bill, with 
amendments, was reported to the House. The 
original bill authorized the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury to issue " for temporary purposes . . . fifty 
million dollars of Treasury notes." As amended, 
the amount was raised to " one hundred million 
dollars of Treasury notes not bearing interest." 
Roscoe Conkling opposed the measure and on 
February 4 made a long speech upon it. 

He was always a "hard money" man; and in 
his course upon the legal-tender bill he, together 
with his brother, Frederick A. Conkling, ignoring 
party lines, endeavored to defeat the measure. 
This speech was so important that a full report of 
it seems desirable in this memoir. 

* * * The credit of a Government, like the credit of an 
individual, consists of the ability and integrity to pay all debts 
and perform all promises with scrupulous exactness and punctu- 



THE TREASURY WILL DECIDE THE WAR 



15; 



ality. This ability and integrity, this untarnished public faith 
and unquestioned pecuniary solvency, is that without which no 
Government can long survive. Public credit alone cannot con- 
fer national immortality or national longevity ; but the loss of 
public credit will be inevitably and swiftly followed by national 
decrepitude and national death. This is true in peace, when wars 
and rumors of wars are hushed throughout the earth. It is true 
in uneventful times, in periods barren of action and prolific of 
repose. But what shall be said of its urgent, warning truth as 
Applicable to us in this dark hour of trial and of danger? Im- 
mediate and adequate financial facilities constitute, beyond all 
question, the overtopping, overmastering subject with which we 
have the power to deal. 

Gentlemen have longed for victories to reinvigorate the lan- 
guishing energies of finance. Victory no doubt would exert a 
potent influence; but, sir, the Treasury will control and decide the 
war, not the war the Treasury. Indeed, the question of money 
and credit is all there is before us ; it is practically the only un- 
settled question of the war. Armies and navies may perish, 
and a public credit well preserved can replace them ; but if the 
public credit perishes, the army and navy can only increase the 
disaster and deepen the dishonor. 

We have patriotism and courage, and fighting men enough to 
crush rebellion throughout the Union, and then to sweep from 
this continent every occupant of it but ourselves, and sponge off 
their ships from our waters. We have in the field the first army 
in history, the first in the means to conquer with. It is said that 
in 181 1 Napoleon had 1,100,000 men, and other instances are 
mentioned of exceeding numbers ; but nowhere short of fabu- 
lous narration can be found an army so numerous, and at the 
same time so powerful in material, so complete in arms and 
equipment. Nowhere can be found an army so well paid ; no- 
where a great army so well fed or cared for ; no nation has ever 
attempted to maintain an army at anything like the same expense. 
The Secretary of War says that 718,512 men have taken the field; 
77,000 of them were three months* men, but 640,637 are enlisted 
for the war. We have eighty-three regiments of cavalry ; eight 
more than France. Every one of this multitude of soldiers is 



154 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

entitled to at least thirteen dollars a month, besides subsistence 
and bounties. Sir, there is nothing like it in all history. No na- 
tion ever attempted it, or approached it ; never for any length of 
time. 

* * * Besides our army, we have a navy to construct and 
maintain, and the future cost of both will be, if not $2,000,000 
a day, $45,000,000 a month. To provide these sums so long as 
they shall be needed, to secure and carry along, till we can pay, 
the amounts which have already been expended, to devise a policy 
which shall carry on the Government when the war is ended, and 
ultimately work out the extinguishment of the public debt — this 
is the problem to be solved, and the Constitution says that we 
alone shall solve it. I believe we can solve it, and will solve it ; 
and I hope by some policy worthy of the occasion and adequate 
to it. But let us have no make-shifts, no subterfuges, no timid 
expedients to dodge honest taxation. Above all things, let us 
practice no concealment or deception upon the tax-payers. * * * 

Complex as are the circumstances by which we are surrounded, 
other men have coped successfully with circumstances as diffi- 
cult, and left behind them the light of their example to warn and 
guide us. We have the folly of some who have scattered ruin 
and strewn wreck in the midst of plenty ; we have the wisdom of 
others who have created and preserved empire in the midst of 
want, and caused civilization to rise on golden wings out of the 
very ashes of exhausted systems. Our own statesmen have done 
far more than their share to endow the world with financial wis- 
dom. It was to this subject that the greatest of Americans gave 
his best endeavors. He delved deep in the mines of perpetual 
prosperity. He founded and organized a new department. He 
conceived and created a system, and the world saw that it was 
good. Upon foundations of honesty and truth he reared an en- 
during structure of public credit, and so pervaded it that to this 
day we meet at every turn the genius of the builder. He haunts 
us yet with the maxims he has left ; maxims from which we are 
invited to depart, though we cannot forget them. He has be- 
queathed to us his lessons of wisdom with that singular felicity 
of diction which made Marshall say "his statement was argu- 
ment, his inference was demonstration." 



THE EX TING UISHMENT OF DEB T. 1 5 5 

Hamilton insisted upon " incorporating, as a fundamental max- 
im, in the system of credit of the United States that the creation 
of debt should always be accompanied by the means of extinguish- 
ment; this is the true secret of rendering public credit immortal." 
Invested with such attributes. Government securities are the best 
securities in the world, and can always be used to negotiate loans 
at the lowest rate of interest. Without these attributes, the obli- 
gations of a Government are the most worthless, the most short- 
lived and shallow, of all devices with which to borrow money- 
Do we not know this ? Do we not heed the teachings of history 
sanctioned by the founders of our institutions ? Do we not know 
that, unless we would make shipwreck of everything, we must 
accompany emission with taxation ? Do we not know that we 
have no right to authorize the utterance of a dollar of paper, 
without accompanying it with a tax for its ultimate redemp- 
tion ? We do know it. But it is said that the principle, though 
a good one and sound in itself, must at this time be sacri- 
ficed to necessity. Necessity! that market price of principle 
at which every virtue has been sold for six thousand years. 
From the apothecary selling poison, to the lord chancellor sell- 
ing justice, the plea has always been, " My poverty, but not my 
will, consents." 

Sir, I deny that any necessity is upon us to take the case out 
of settled rules. We need money — large sums of money — and 
the whole resources and property of the nation are liable to pay 
tribute to raise it. We ov/e debts — large debts — and the whole 
property of the country is holden to pay them. Does anybody 
suppose that the security is not ample, or the resources not abund- 
ant ? My colleague from the Erie district [Mr. Spaulding] told 
us that the taxable property of the nation amounts to sixteen 
thousand million dollars ; and he produced a statement from the 
Census Bureau to prove it. In reality it is vastly more than that, 
because he gave us a self-fixed valuation — the valuation fixed by 
proprietors themselves, having an interest in reducing and cover- 
ing up the amount. According to my colleague, at the end of 
this fiscal year our debt will be only $650,000,000. One would 
think here is margin enough for Wall Street, State Street, or 
Chestnut Street. Sir, it is margin enough, properly husbanded 



156 LIFE AND LETTERS OF R OS CO E CON/CLING. 

from first to last, to enable us to raise all the money we want at 
five per cent., and history proves it. 

Now, sir, what does this plea of necessity mean — this plea upon 
which we are invited to leave the trodden paths of safety, and 
seek new methods of " coining false moneys from that crucible 
called debt?" What is the necessity which prevents adherence to 
the old and approved methods of raising money ? The argument 
must be twofold: first, that the people will be better ready at 
some other time than the present to pay what, in the end, they 
must pay, with interest ; and second, that necessary and legiti- 
mate taxation will be unpopular, and bring denunciation upon 
those who vote for it. Sir, I take issue upon both propositions. I 
say the country is rich and ready. Money is abundant — very 
abundant. There is in the loyal States $250,000,000 of gold — 
the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Alley] said the other day 
$300,000,000 — more than ever before, and if we deserve it we can 
have it. The whole country is full of wealth. The enormous 
expenditures of this home war have been made among ourselves, 
and the money has remained here, and not gone into the channels 
which foreign war prescribes for currency. The harvest has been 
abundant ; materials and productions, raw and wrought, have 
been in great demand ; and nearly every loyal State teems with 
the elements of material prosperity. From a very extravagant, we 
have latterly become a very economical people, and thus the per- 
centage, as well as the aggregate of savings and of earnings, is un- 
usually great. We are able to pay now, and we can never pay bet- 
ter than now. 

So much for the ability of the people to bear taxation. Now, 
a word as to their willingness to bear it. I believe no error could 
be greater, no aspersion more libellous upon the patriotic people 
of the country, than the supposition that they will shrink from 
paying the legitimate expenses of annihilating rebellion. The 
millions who have risen in majesty to defend from overthrow the 
institutions of their fathers have poured out costlier tribute and 
more precious treasure than taxation asks. They have sent their 
sons to distant battle-fields, and gone themselves to bare their 
bosoms to the icy fang of death. When such is the hallowed 
measure of spontaneous loyalty, shall we presume to impugn it ? 



THE REDEMPTION OF PAPER MONE V. I 5 7 

Shall we suppose that those who are pouring out their dearest 
jewels, and offering more, will palter about honest taxation ? No, 
sir; it requires no courage for a Representative to vote taxes now. 
He is entitled to no credit for doing it. The people are eager to 
be taxed, and no needed levy will be a tribute wrung from reluc- 
tance, but an offering laid with a bound at the feet of the coun- 
try. One thing is needed, and only one, to make taxation wel- 
come. The people must know what is to be done with their 
money. They must know that some things are not to be done 
with it. They must know that the money is not to be swept into 
the lap of gamblers and thieves, whether of high or low degree, in 
office or out. 



Above all things else they must know that it is to be applied 
to the m.ost vigorous policy of war — that policy most destructive 
of rebellion and most crushing to the idea, whoever dare suggest 
it, be he in high place or not, of a continental partition, or dis- 
memberment in any contingency. They must know that no idea 
of accepting anything less than absolute submission lurks undis- 
covered or glides unbruised near any department of the Govern- 
ment. They must know that dalliance and delay find no hiding- 
place either among the cushions or the saddles on which power 
is seated. 

******* 

We have abundant means in our hands; the question is, Shall 
we make proper use of them ? Unless we appeal to the moneyed 
interest of the country with an adequate policy, we can get no 
money, and ought not to get it; we shall not deserve it. But if 
we do present a sound and solid policy, we can realize, and real- 
ize promptly, all the money we require. We can, in anticipation 
of taxation, realize it on paper based upon and to be retired by 
taxation, that being made part of the compact with the public 
creditor. If this very bill, in place of containing a legal-tender 
clause, had provided that every note which it proposes to utter 
should have stamped or inscribed upon it, '' Based upon taxation," 
**To be redeemed by taxation," so as to be inwrought with taxa- 
tion, that mode of imparting value would, I submit, have been a 



158 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

vast improvement on the provision as it stands. Such a provision 
would have seemed like the magic touch of Hamilton. He says: 

" The true definition of public debt is a property subsisting in the faith 
of the Government. Its essence is promise. Its definite value depends 
upon the reliance that the promise will be faithfully fulfilled." 

-)(• -3f * * * * * 

There has been some carping at the Committee of Ways and 
Means because they have not brought in a tax bill before this 
time. For one, I have no patience with such strictures. Charged, 
as the committee is, with more onerous and perplexing duties 
than rest on any other persons in the Government just now, I 
think it is entitled to the thanks of the House and of the country 
for its multiplied and conscientious labors, hastened, no doubt, 
as fast as possible. With very great respect to that portion of the 
committee favoring this bill, I venture to suggest some criticism 
upon it. It has not been put forward as a measure calculated or 
able to stand alone; it is admitted to be incomplete in itself. It 
is to be propped up by a tax bill. So far, so good; but the two 
together cannot stand without something else upon which to lean; 
they are both intended, as is now admitted, as a kind of pedal 
attachment to a bigger thing — a great banking scheme, a creature 
of gigantic proportions, "fearfully and wonderfully made! " * * * 

I do not wish to say anything disrespectful of this great bank- 
ing invention; but, with him of old, "I fear the Greeks," and 
when this Trojan horse is trotted out I hope some doubter with 
a spear will investigate his bowels and see what he is likely to 
emit, whether armed men or something else; and if armed men, 
we'll add them to that army which my colleague from the Onon- 
daga district [Mr. Sedgwick] said the other day goes into winter 
quarters in summer weather. 

There is one thing, however, al.tout the proposed banking 
scheme, and about the bill before us, intended, probably, to at- 
tract votes, which seems of very questionable policy and very 
doubtful ethics. I mean hostility to the existing banks of the 
country. And inasmuch as I own not a farthing in the stock of 
any bank, and have not the slightest connection with one, perhaps 
a word in behalf of bartks in loyal States will be borne with from me. 

The present troubles, or rather their own patriotic action, have 



THE STATE BANKS. 



159 



broken the banks; for every commercial man in this House knows 
that the banks were never stronger than when the Secretary of 
the Treasury appealed to them for loans. They allowed the 
Government to carry off their specie, their capital from their 
vaults, and if that did not break them, they at all events might 
have adopted a policy which would have saved them. But they 
had to suspend, and the design of this bill would seem to be 
to prevent their resumption of specie payment. At all events, 
it is obviously the policy in some quarters to preach a crusade 
against the present banks, and array prejudices and votes on 
that issue. 

There are two questions to determine before entering upon 
such a course: first, Is it expedient? second, Is it right? There 
are in the free States upwards of twelve hundred banks, with an 
aggregate capital of $350,000,000. They have fifteen thousand 
directors, and one hundred and eighty or two hundred thousand 
stockholders. They ramify everywhere, and connect themselves 
with all the capital of the country. In view of these facts, is it 
better for the Government to make the banks its fiscal enemies 
or its fiscal friends ? If we have no further use for them, if we 
have done with them, if we are above and beyond them, it is of 
no importance as to expediency either way. But, even then, are 
we justified now in making war upon them ? The banks of New 
York, Philadelphia and Boston represent a capital of $119,000,- 
000, in round numbers. Of that capital they have loaned to the 
Government $100,000,000. Has any other interest in the coun- 
try put so nearly its whole capital into the war ? I know of none; 
and I submit to gentlemen whether, even if the stock and assets 
of these banks were not largely owned by orphans and widows, it 
would be quite the thing for us just now to indulge in unprofit- 
able hostility to banks ? 

But, sir, if this scheme is the best thing that can be devised to 
sustain the credit of the Government, it is entitled to, and I hope 
will receive, every vote here, no matter whom it benefits or in- 
jures. It seems to be conceded by the advocates of the measure 
that unless the legal-tender clause is retained it would not be wise 
to pass it; in other words, that a good objection to that clause 
would be fatal to the bill. I propose, therefore, to assign my rea- 



l6o LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

sons briefly for voting against the attempt by legislation to make 
paper a legal tender. 

The proposition is a new one. No precedent can be urged in 
its favor; no suggestion of the existence of such a power can be 
found in the legislative history of the country; and I submit to 
my colleague, as a lawyer, the proposition that this amounts' to 
affirmative authority of the highest kind against it. Had such a 
power lurked in the Constitution, as construed by those who or- 
dained and administered it, we should find it so recorded. The 
occasion for resorting to it, or at least referring to it, has, we 
know, repeatedly arisen; and had such a power existed it would 
have been recognized and acted on. It is hardly too much to say, 
therefore, that the uniform and universal judgment of statesmen, 
jurists and lawyers has denied the constitutional right of Con- 
gress to make paper a legal tender for debts to any extent what- 
ever. But more is claimed here than the right to create a legal 
tender heretofore unknown. The provision is not confined to 
transactions in futuro, but is retroactive in its scope. It reaches 
back and strikes at every existing pecuniary obligation. 

* * -Sf * * * * 

The Constitution of the United States is an instrument of dele- 
gated and enumerated powers, and Congress has no powers ex- 
cept those which the Constitution confers. Not so with the Leg- 
islatures of the States. They have all the residuum of legislative 
power. In looking, therefore, for a power in the Constitution of 
a State, the question usually is, has it been taken away or for- 
bidden ? But, in looking at the federal Constitution, the ques- 
tion is. Has the power been given; is it there ? Can you put your 
finger upon it among the grants of the Constitution? If not, if it 
is not there at all, you have not the power, and there is an end of 
the whole matter. 

But, sir, passing, as I see I must, from the constitutional ob- 
jections to the bill, it seems to me that its moral imperfections 
are equally serious. It will, of course, rproclaim throughout the 
country a saturnalia of fraud, a carnival tor rogues. Every agent,"^ 
attorney, treasurer, trustee, guardian, executor, administrator, 
consignee, commission merchant fand every other debtor of a 
fiduciary character, who has received for others money, hard 



THE PROPOSED LEGAL-TENDER SYSTEM. l5l 

money, worth a hundred cents on the dollar, will forever release 
himself from liability by buying up for that knavish purpose, at 
its depreciated value, the spurious currency which we shall have 
put afloat. Everybody will do it, except those who are more 
honest than the American Congress advises them to be. Think 
of savings' banks intrusted with enormous aggregates of the pit- 
tances of the poor, the hungry, and the homeless, the stranger, 
the needle-women, the widow and the orphan, and we are arrang- 
ing for a robbery of ten, if not of fifty per cent, of the entire 
amount, and that by a contrivance so new as never to have been 
discovered under the administrations of Monroe Edwards or James 
Buchanan. 

To reverse the picture; after the act shall have gone into effect, 
honest men undertake transiictions based upon the spurious ten- 
der at its then value. By and by comes a repeal, and they are 
driven to ruin in multitudes by the inevitable loss incident to a 
return to a metallic currency. I understand there are forty 
thousand petitioners in both Houses now praying for the passage 
of a bankrupt law. Sir, provision will be needed on a scale of 
bankruptcy more liberal and gigantic than England ever saw, for 
the relief of honest people, who will be cheated and ruined under 
the legal-tender system now proposed, if the country makes the 
experiment and survives it. 

But, surmounting every legal impediment, and every dictate 
of conscience involved, viewing it as a mere pecuniary expedient, 
it seems too precarious and unpromising to deserve the slightest 
confidence. 

The whole scheme presupposes that the notes to be emitted 
will be lepers in the commercial world from the hour they are 
brought into it; that they will be shunned and condemned by the 
laws of trade and value. If this is not to be their fate, what is 
the sense, as was said in the federal constitutional Convention, 
in attempting to legislate their value up. 

Now, sir, I do not believe that you can legislate up the value 
of a thing any more than I believe you can make generals heroes 
by legislation. The Continental Congress tried legislating values 
up even by resorts to penalties, but the inexorable laws of trade, 
as independent as the law of gravitation, kept them down. I do 
n 



1 62 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

believe you can legislate a value down, and that you can do it by 
attempting to legislate it up, and I hope that my time will enable 
me to give some reasons for that; but let me continue the present 
point. My colleague argued that any other thing or metal, if 
stamped with the same value, would be as valuable as coin for 
commercial purposes within the jurisdiction of the Government 
so stamping it. Thus a piece of paper and a piece of gold 
stamped alike would be of equal value. Here is what he said: 

" Any other metal or thing that should be stamped, and its value reg- 
ulated by all the Governments of the world, would pass equally as well in 
all commercial transactions as gold and silver, although not intrinsically as 
valuable. Exchange bills or Treasury notes, whose value is fixed by Gov- 
ernment, and stampted as money, would pass as money in the payment of 
debts within the jurisdiction of the Government fixing such value." 

Let us examine this. A piece of gold is coined into an eagle 
and stamped ten dollars, and a piece of paper stamped of the 
same amount. Now, cut off the stanip from both, and are they 
of the same value still? If not, why not? Simply because coin, 
like every other article of value, represents the cost of produc- 
tion. Thus every coin purports to be of a value equal to the cost 
of producing it, less the expense of coinage and less also the 
alloy which is put into it to make it harder, and to prevent 
its being absorbed into the coinage or the crucibles of other 
nations, as it might be if the standard were not controllable. 
If my colleague is right in his idea that calling a thing gold will 
make it gold, or as good as gold, why was it that the brass guineas 
of James II. would not pass for guineas ? And why did the de- 
basing alloys of Henry VIII, Edward and Charles II, strike down 
the currency of England to the most ruinous degradation ? Why 
was it infamous for the Stuarts to clip the coin ? Why should we 
not make our dollars out of fifty pennies' worth of metal, and 
cause them to pass ? That device, if it would work, would solve 
our difficulty. Why was it that the Continental money, with an 
edict of Congress that whoever refused to take it at par should 
be held an enemy to his country, why, with such value affixed, 
did Continental money become so worthless ? In the city of Phil- 
adelphia $7,000 was charged in Continental money for a dinner, 
with wine, for two persons; and two gold guineas settled the score. 



A STAMP OF VALUE. \(iX 

If my colleague is right that the Government, by putting on a 
stamp of value, can make things really of that value, I would 
suggest that we pass a bill to put a stamp of $125 on each of the 
Government horses. They each represent the sum of $125; but 
unstamped they are said not to be worth the money. If the thing 
could be carried out, a very snug sum could be made in that way, 
and we might even make them a legal tender. 

I said, a little v/ay back, that the attempt to legislate up the 
value of a currency might legislate it down, and that some reasons 
might be given for apprehending such a result here. Take one 
obvious view of this. As between the creditor and the debtor 
interest in the country, the debtor interest always predominates. 
At this time it largely predominates, and a moment's thought, 
without the figures before us, will show that the debtors are in a 
great numerical majority over the creditors. It is also true that 
almost every man in the country belongs either to the creditor or 
the debtor class — every man owes somebody else, or some one 
owes him. So it will be seen that more than half of us through- 
out the land are debtors. 

Now if a particular kind of paper money is made a legal ten- 
der, which will pay a debt and wipe it out to the full amount of 
the face of the paper, no matter how little it costs, it of course 
becomes at once the interest of all those owing debts to depreci- 
ate, as far as possible, and cut down the price at which the paper 
can be had. In this way a strong inducement would be offered 
to more than half the public to bear down the currency created, 
and to continue the system as long as possible. Unless commer- 
cial people — and other people nowadays — are different from all 
the other children of the man who bit the apple, we shall dam- 
age the real, honest value of the paper we are going to issue by 
making a law that every man who can buy it up at less than its 
face can make it go just as far in paying his debts as if he gave 
for it a hundred cents in the dollar. 

I wish I had time; I wish I was sure the committee would give 
me five minutes after the hammer falls to answer an argument 
made on yesterday by the distinguished gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts, [Mr. Hooper] ; but I am afraid to trust the committee 
for that, and I pass it, only saying, with great respect to him, that 



164 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the only consideration he suggested which weighed with me in 
favor of this legal tender scheme was, that the people, the Gov- 
ernment having taken the coin from the banks, would be unable 
to pay their taxes in coin, because they could not get it. Sir, 
that is a good suggestion, and all we need to meet it is a very 
simple provision, having none of the objections to making paper 
pay debts indiscriminately. You only want in the bill we pass 
the old doctrine of recoupement and set-off, and then the citizen 
can pay his tax in Government issue. This is a sound and equi- 
table doctrine. It is as old as the common law of England ; as 
old as the civil law of Rome. It means merely this: if my friend 
here has my check, which has not been paid, and I have a tax or 
a debt against him, he may pay that tax or debt with the check, 
setting off one against the other, and settle it. You need no legal 
tender for that. Everybody's plan is to make the notes issued 
receivable for taxes. 

But shall it be said that, because we all agree that the Treasury 
notes to be issued should be receivable for taxes, we shall go fur- 
ther and hoist the flood-gates of fraud, by making these notes 
pay debts to the amount of their face, when the bill virtually 
admits that they will be worth but ninety cents in the dollar on 
the day the law takes effect? No, sir; and I thank God that the 
great State of New York, which carries one-fifth of the burdens 
of the nation, and which has loaned for years to the Government 
ninety per cent, of the money it has borrowed — I thank God that 
the State of New York has, in the popular branch of her Legisla- 
ture, set the seal of her disapprobation upon this monstrous prop- 
osition by a vote of almost two to one. Such a step, if it should 
ever be taken by a Government, should be taken only when every- 
thing else has failed and the last extremity has been reached. It 
is the last expedient to which kings and nations can resort. When 
you clothe an individual with the power to give his own checks to 
pay his debts and supply his wants when he has nothing with 
which to pay them, and when you ordain that every one shall re- 
ceive his check, you have performed for that man the last sad 
offices of financial humanity; there is nothing left to be done for 
him; and if he fails then, he is past resuscitation and past resur- 
rection. So of a Government; you may try any other expedient 



PREDICTED DOWNFALL OF OUR CREDIT. 1 65 

with impunity, and if it fails, you have remaining a resort to other 
things; but if you once authorize the issue and compel the accept- 
ance of its own paper, and that proves to be a failure, there is 
nothing left; the die is cast; the last link is broken. 

Are we reduced to any such extremity? Do gentlemen reflect 
what is the admission contained in this scheme; the desperation 
which it presupposes? Do they think of the danger and distrust 
to which they expose their Government both at home and abroad ? 

It is right to learn of an enemy, and already the Lommi Times 
hails this $100,000,000 legal-tender bill as the dawn of American 
bankruptcy and the downfall of American credit. Perhaps we 
can learn financial wisdom from a nation which long since estab- 
lished in its Parliament the standing rule that the creation of a 
debt should never take place v/ithout being accompanied by the 
mean of its extinguishment. 

Mr. Chairman, I believe all the money needed can be provided 
in season by means of unquestionable legality and safety. The 
substitute I have offered will, I believe, without substantial alter- 
ation, effect the result. 

And let me assure gentleman that it will stand alone upon the 
tax bill to be brought in, and it will not be necessary to have be- 
hind it a new banking system, which could not be set in motion 
until a year after the expiration of the war. 

The advocates of the original bill present a more sombre pic- 
ture for the future than I had supposed to be necessary, although 
I think the account of the nation shows larger balances against 
us than was stated at the opening of the debate. The estimates 
submitted to us show the following items: 

Debt funded or liquidated up to January 15, 1862. . $306,000,000 
The floating debt contains a large unknown element, 

but cannot be less than 200,000,000 

Required for expenditures, ordinary and extraordi- 
nary, to July I, 1S62 300,000,000 



,000,000 



Eight hundred and six millions! Who can credit these figures 
when he remembers that the world's greatest tragedian closed 



1 66 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

his bloody drama at St. Helena leaving the public debt of France 
less than seventy million pounds ? 

This enormous debt amounts, for each Congressional district 
represented upon this floor, to $4,210,000, and when the war is 
ended it will be more than five millions of dollars. Let every 
gentleman ponder upon the fact that there is more than three 
hundred thousand dollars of interest to be paid every year by 
his Congressional district. 

In addition, when the war is over, our expenses upon a peace 
footing will be enormously large for many years. We may anti- 
cipate the following estimates: 

Interest on public debt $50,000,000 

Sinking fund of one per cent, on the debt 8,000,000 

Army, say 75,000,000 

Navy, and coast defences 65,000,000 

Civil list 50,000,000 

$248,006,000 

A sinking fund of one per cent, invested in six per cents., with 
the interest reinvested semi-annually, will extinguish the whole 
debt in thirty-one years. Therefore I have stated my figures as 
to sinking fund at one per cent. If we can levy and collect the 
sum required on a peace footing, or nearly that sum, the Govern- 
ment is financially put in the best condition; and this, or nearly 
this, we ought to do. It is idle to pretend that it can be done, 
or that anything can be done, to carry us through, without inflict- 
ing great suffering and sorrow. But the pangs and trials of a 
nation are in the ratio of its destinies. We must not forget the 
sublimity and vastness-of the epoch, and of the sacrifices it war- 
rants. 

There has been no such occasion presented to a nation, no 
such demand made upon a nation, during the lifetime of the 
human race. The history of America, the history of free govern- 
ment, the history of constitutional liberty, begins or ends now. 
We have our career and our traditions as a nation; they are safe; 
but our history is yet to be made. Our destiny is, without an 
ally in the world, with nations banded against us, to hold fast a 
continent in the midst of the greatest, guiltiest revolution the 
world has ever seen. * * * 



MR. MORTON'S SUBSTITUTE. 1 67 

On the fifth day of February Mr. Spaulding 
moved " that the Committee rise with a view of 
closing this debate." 

When the question was about to be put 
Roscoe ConkUng demanded tellers. The Com- 
mittee divided and the tellers reported— yeas, 
fifty-two; nays, sixty -two. Hence the motion 
was lost. 

The sixth of February was an eventful day in 

the House of Representatives. After many 

speeches for and against the Spaulding bill, an 

amendment " to strike out the legal-tender clause " 

in the original bill was rejected. Mr. Conkling 

withdrew the substitute which he had proposed. It 

was then decided that a vote should first be taken 

on the substitute finally offered by Valentine B. 

Horton, of Ohio, a member of the Committee of 

Ways and Means. The gist of his substitute was 

to authorize the issue " on the credit of the United 

States of $100,000,000 of Treasury notes bearing 

interest at the rate of three and sixty-five-hun- 

dredths per cent, per annum, payable in two 

years after date to bearer at the Treasury of the 

United States, * " ''' and such notes shall be 

receivable for all public dues, except duties on 

imports." The bill further enabled the Secretary 

of the Treasury to fund the Treasury notes by 

issuing coupon or registered bonds " to an amount 



1 68 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

not exceeding $500,000,000," which was divided 
so as to bear interest at different rates. 

When this bill was reported from the Commit- 
tee of the Whole to the House, the vote was first 
taken on the Horton substitute. The yeas and 
nays being ordered, the question was put, and it 
was decided in the negative by fifty-five yeas and 
ninety-five nays. Frederick A. and Roscoe Conk- 
ling voted YEA. 

The question then recurred on the modification 
of the original bill offered by Thaddeus Stevens 
as a substitute. This amended bill provided for 
the issue of "$150,000,000 of United States notes, 
not bearing interest, payable to bearer at the 
Treasury of the United States, ^* * * and of 
such denominations as he (the Secretary of the 
Treasury) may deem expedient, but not less than 
five dollars each." It further authorized the issue 
of bonds to an amount not exceeding $500,000,000. 
Two penal sections to guard against counterfeit- 
ing were adopted as part of the measure. 

This bill as thus amended, after a long debate 
and vigorous opposition, was passed by yeas, 
ninety-three, and nays, fifty-nine, Frederick A. 
Conkling and Roscoe Conkling voting nay. 

Several days later the Spaulding bill passed the 
Senate with some amendments and was returned 
to the House. Frederick A. and Roscoe Conklinir 



THE BILL IS passed: 



169 



voted against Mr. Stevens's amendments to pay i7i 
coin " officers, soldiers and sailors in the army and 
navy of the United States, and for all supplies 
purchased by the said Government." This was 
lost by a vote of sixty-seven to seventy-two. 

Then the question w^as upon the sixth amend, 
ment of the Senate to pay iiiterest in coin on bonds 
aiid notes. Roscoe Conkling demanded the yeas 
and nays. It was adopted by a majority of thirty- 
two; the Messrs. Conkling voting in the affirmative. 

Several minor amendments were then concurred 
in, and the bill finally passed the House, February 
24, by a vote of yeas, ninety-seven, and nays, twen- 
ty-two. On the next day the Senate, without a divi- 
sion, adopted the amended bill, which was at once 
approved by President Lincoln. Thus did the legal- 
tender act, after a debate of two months and in the 
face of a most able opposition, become a law. 

This was the only occasion of the three sessions 
of the Thirty-seventh Congress when Roscoe 
Conkling found himself outside of the policy of 
his party. Now in the light of later days we are 
happy to see that the Government survived the 
inflation which attended the issue of paper money, 
and that the enormous resources of the nation, 
together with the wisdom of the Republican party 
in sustaining the public credit, carried the country 
safely through this fearful crisis. 



I862-I863. 

CHAPTER XI. 

RESOLUTIONS SPEECHES HE IS RENOMINATED AND 

DEFEATED. 

nPHE next important official act of Roscoe Conk- 
ling was to offer a resolution February 24, 
1862, to the effect " that the thanks of Congress are 
due ^' * ''^* to Generals Halleck and Grant for 
planning the recent movements in their respective 
divisions ^- ^ * " This had special reference 
to the recent victory of Fort Donelson, Kentucky. 
It seems to have been the first of the kind offered 
to commemorate the services of General Grant. 
He said : 

My purpose * * * is this : I desire that those who earn 
military honors shall wear them, and shall wear all the honors to 
which they are entitled. * * * 

I do not believe that these victories were arranged by men sit- 
ting at a distance engaged in what is termed " organizing victory." 
My belief is that they have been achieved by bold and resolute 
men left free to act and to conquer, men having the confidence 
of their soldiers ; men who believe that the hearts of a patriotic sol- 
diery are the best intrenchments, and that devotion to the cause 
they fight for is the best discipline to win battles. They are due 
to men who have believed in action, unhesitating action, with the 

bayonet when needed, and not in "organizing victory." I want to 

170 



A RESOLUTION TO ABOLISH SLAVERY. 171 

crown with heroic honors the real heroes of this war, * * * 
and my object will be accomplished if the great honor belonging 
to the blows lately struck on Western rivers and their banks 
shall be conferred where it belongs, and shall not be appropriated 
or absorbed by any person whatever who has not earned it, * * * 

In compliance with the suggestion of the Presi- 
dent in his message of March 6, concerning eman- 
cipation, Roscoe Conkling introduced, March lo, 
a joint resolution which, on the following day, 
after much opposition, was adopted in the House 
by eighty-nine yeas to thirty-one nays. Of the 
thirty-one members voting against this resolution 
all but two were Democrats. 

The resolution read as follows : 

^^ Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States in Congress assembled, That the United States 
ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual 
abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be 
used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the incon- 
veniences, public and private, produced by such change of sys- 
tem." 

In the spring of 1862 the Ninety-seventh Regi- 
ment was recruited in the counties of Oneida, 
Lewis and Herkimer. It was called the "Conk- 
ling Rifles." Before starting for the seat of war, 
Mr. Conkling addressed them and wished them 
God-speed. For such occasions he prepared him- 
self with as much care as if he were to speak in 
the House of Representatives. 

Mr. Conkling's next speech in Congress was in 



I 72 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

regard to the report of the " Select Committee 
on Government Contracts." He denounced the 
extravagant expenses of the Committee in travel- 
ing from State to State ; and he specially objected 
to the item of "mileage," wherein he parodied 
Pope by saying, 

'* A little mileage is a dangerous thing." 

A few witty paragraphs from this speech will 
be published in our chapter on " Oratory." 

The following letter from Mr. Conkling to his 
friend Daniel Batchelor, at Utica, explains his 
position in the then coming Congressional cam- 
paign. 

[Private.] 

House of Rf.prf.sentatives, | 
May 10, 1862. ) 

My Dear Sir : Have your letter — second one remaining un- 
answered — glad to get it — always glad to hear from you. 

Besides the interest your letters have, I know that you take 
nothing amiss when I cannot find a minute for leisure or leisure's 
work. If you want to read the speech you mention, read one of 
these. It was a little " mixed " in the Herald both by the type- 
setter and form maker. 

I don't know why Mr. Manning should be vindictive toward 
me — there is nothing in my acts toward him or his profession to 
account for it. 

Whom do you report as my " would-be rival "? Stupid, in me ? 
Well, like enough ; but I don't know who is thus poor in content- 
ment. 

They can't beat us by a fight — remember my prediction — but in 
another way it would be easier than they would believe to beat 
vw. You would scarcely believe how easily that could be done, 



HE AD VISES BURNING THIS LETTER. \ 73 

but I think you will believe that unless the constituency which 
has honored me so much, and of which I feel so proud, unless the 
Republican party in Oneida, unprompted, unpersuaded, unde- 
ceived, wants me for its Representative here in this weary work- 
house, I would no longer be here, however easily I could secure a 
return. Rest assured of this, and further, that much as I regard 
the opinions and wishes of friends, such friends as have supported 
me, much as I am the willing child of friendship, no advice, no 
opinion, will change my purpose to stand squarely upon that 
ground. / will not be a candidate again by my oivn seeking, and no 
friend will regard my wishes who allows me to appear in such a 
guise. I say this freel}^, for you will approve and appreciate it. 
One more thing on this theme of bad taste. 

There is everything in my position here that I could reasonably 
desire — if relationship to men and things here could kindle the 
fires of ambition to return, those fires would burn brightly, more 
so than you have any reason to suppose — but home, rest, inde- 
pendence, a profession preserved, a future provided for, already 
too much neglected, and tastes cultivated, too long wasted — 
something to live by and die by — all these '' enter at the open 
door," 

The fight you predict has its charms — should I be in the case, 
and noise disturbs no one but me, let us have a row by all means. 

The , after publishing the wire report of W , has 

taken care not to publish the square retraction and apology he 
made in the same public place where he violated decency. This 
was done upon a square requirement. Governor Crittenden (who 
is as gallant and ready for extremes as in his youth) is acting for 
me, and acting earnestly, and it is a curious illustration of base- 
ness that a journal should do and omit, as one Democratic organ 
has done in just such a matter. Pardon all this, burn it and 
write me. Your friend, 

R. C. 

Soon afterward he advocated and voted for a 
bill to confiscate tlie property of the rebels. 

In answer to an invitation to address a meeting 



174 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

of loyal citizens in the city of New York, Mr. 
Conkling wrote the following letter: 

House of Representatives, ) 
Washington, July 14, 1862. ) 

Gentlemen : — The duties resting upon a Representative in the 
closing hours of the present session require me to be constantly 
in my seat. Were I at liberty to accept the invitation with which 
you have honored me, it would give me great pleasure to address 
a mass meeting of your citizens on Tuesday next. 

Although debarred the privilege of participating in your pro- 
ceedings, I shall regard them with an interest not likely ever 
again to attach to any similar occasion. The exigencies and de- 
mands of the hour give to public action at this moment an import- 
ance which cannot now be realized. A great future is enshrouded 
in a little period immediately before us. The fate of our country 
depends upon the alacrity of its citizens. Your great metropolis 
has the leading part in the sacrifices and the duties which await us. 

The imperial position of our State was never shown so conspic- 
uously; her resources and munificence have never been so indis- 
pensable to the whole nation as since the outbreak of the present 
rebellion. The position New York shall now assume will exert 
a commanding influence upori the final issue of our national diffi- 
culties, and the action of the meeting on Tuesday will do much 
to awaken feeling throughout the State. 

Let the city speak in emphatic tones in favor of sparing noth- 
ing that stands in the way of crushing treason at home and repel- 
ling insolence from abroad. The meeting is timely, and I wish it 
complete success. 

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

Hon. James W. White and others, Committee. 

Concerning Roscoe Conkling's wish, as stated in 
his letter, " to be constantly in his seat," it may be 
said that he scrupulously avoided absence from 



HE IS CONSTANTL Y IN HIS SEA T. I 75 

the House except when imperative. He often 
humorously spoke of himself as a "hired man,'' 
who should attend to his day's work. If he an- 
swered a card brought to him by the doorkeeper 
he soon disposed of his visitor, for he well knew 
that an active member is often purposely called 
from his seat at a critical moment when he can- 
not object to the consideration of an important 
measure. 

The author has known Mr. Conkling to excuse 
himself from the table of a formal dinner-party to 
the end that he might resume his seat on the floor 
of Congress. He was a "watch dog'' of legisla- 
tion, and always, kept the run of the proceedings 
with a view either to favor or oppose any bill of a 
weighty nature. 

Roscoe Conkling voted July 15 " for an act 
reducing Congressional mileage." In the course 
of his remarks he said : 

* * * We have been sitting here a good many months 
S)^mpathizing most kindly with the overburdened people of this 
country; we have expended some rhetoric upon the fact that we 
are engaged in the most expensive war the world has ever seen; 
we know that we are carrying a public debt greater in proportion 
to our basis of taxation, taking into account the rates of interest 
we pay, than the public debt of England; a great variety of most 
cogent reasons for retrenchment and reform are gravely evident, 
and earnest professions have been made on all sides of a deter- 
mination to economize and correct abuses. But what have we 
done ? Much has been said, but how much has been done ? We 



I 76 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

have increased a great many salaries; many of them, I think, 
without any good or sufficient reason for it. I say so under favor, 
meaning no disrespect to that majority made up of all shades of 
party politics which has thought otherwise. On the other hand, 
we have not scrupled to cut down the pay of brave men who have 
gone to stricken fields to maintain the honor and existence of the 
Government. We have been in various ways regaling the public 
ear with necessities of reform, and I submit to gentlemen, one 
and all, that if we are sincere in the matter, if we mean to do our 
duty, it behooves us, as we value our respect and our consistency, 
to remember that charity is not the only thing that should begin 
at home. Let us cut down our own pay, let us cut it doTon liber- 
ally, and then we can with propriety and consistency make ivar upon 
the emoluments and superfluities of others.'''^ Upon this ground we 
can stand; and we ought not to stand upon any other if we could. 
* * * I am for a mileage reform, I am for a reform that shall be 
a practical and simple one. Such a proposition is now before us. 
We have it within our power to eradicate a system which has long 
been a sin and an abuse; and I call upon the gentleman who 
introduced the original half-way proposition, and upon every 
other gentleman, to join hands in passing the bill. * * * 

During the session his voice was often raised 
for " economy in the pubUc expense, that labor 
may be h'ghtly burdened by taxation." This was 
especially shown in his opposition to unnecessary 
appropriations and in his support of the bill to re- 
duce the mileage of members. 

In the autumn, Roscoe Conkling received his 
first and only defeat for representative in Con- 
gress. The Republican Convention met at Rome 
(four days after the date of the Emancipation 
Proclamation) September 26. Charles II. Hop- 

* The Italics are the Author's. 



RENO M IN A TED BY A CCLA MA TION. I 7 7 

kins, the chairman of the County Committee, 
called the Convention to order. Senator A. H. 
Bailey was chosen as permanent president. After 
the usual preliminary business, D. B. Danforth, of 
Annsville, moved that Roscoe [Conkling be nom- 
inated by acclamation for Congress. The Hon. 
Ward Hunt, who, it will be remembered, opposed 
Mr. Conkling in the County Convention of 1858, 
seconded the nomination and spoke at some length. 
The question was put and carried amid much en- 
thusiastic applause. In the resolutions which 
were next unanimously adopted, Roscoe Conkling 
was praised for " his knowledge of public affairs, 
his unwearied attention to the interests of his con- 
stituents, his devotion to the great interests of 
Freedom, his efficient support of the President in 
all his efforts to preserve the Union and to crush 
rebellion, his eloquent advocacy of the important 
interests of the army and navy, the confidence 
and esteem in which he is held by his associates 
in Congress and by the President, together with 
his unspotted personal character." ^' * * 

Mr. Conkling, in response to the call of the Con- 
vention, made a stirring speech, from which we 

print the following extracts : 

* * -x- * -x- * * 

We are passing through a stormy, fearful crisis — a crisis which 
demands of men in public station the highest qualities of the 
mind and of the heart. Wisdom, courage, truth, an absence of 



IJrS LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

all disguises and concealments, an unmistakal^le position upon 
the one great issue, a position untrammeled by connections or 
obligations, these are the least qualifications to be accepted from 
any man who aspires to utter for the next two years the voice of 
a constituency such as you represent to-day. Could I invest my- 
self with these qualities, could I hope to exhibit them as many 
others could whom you might have chosen, I should still shrink 
from the labors and anxieties of a Congress destined to deal with 
perhaps the most momentous questions ever submitted to a legis- 
lative body — a Congress upon whose firmness and fidelity to the 
loyal sentiment of the country will hang the question whether 
the Government shall be upheld and perpetuated in its dignity and 
power, or whether it shall go down under the combined assaults 
of traitors in front and enemies in the rear. 

The ordeal is one which the wisest, boldest honest man might 
wish to shun. * * * Had it pleased you to commit the in- 
terests of the district to other and better hands, I should have re- 
turned to a home and to private interests long neglected, glad to 
rest from the labors of public life, and grateful for favors already 
showered upon me far beyond my deserts. But it is enough for 
me to know that it has been ordered otherwise. You have 
summoned me once more to carry the standard, and I am 
ready; ready with my poor ability to keep it against all comers, 
and, supported by such men as I see around me, to bear it 
untorn and unsoiled through the bitter conflict which I know 
awaits me. 

There is a joy called " the joy of the battle," and it would be 
false to deny that I feel that joy in facing the false and foul at- 
tacks, open and secret, made upon me personally for political 
effect. I hold it an honor to be the object of especial assault by 
those who would humble and disgrace our glorious country in her 
political position and belie her loyalty to the Government. * * * 

The election we are approaching is destined to be ever memor- 
able in the history of our country. It will settle, in a great meas- 
ure, the whole question of our existence as a nation. It will pro- 
nounce louder than any battle can pronounce, the fate of the re- 
bellion. It will decide whether we are to gain the objects for 
which thousands of lives and millions of dollars have been laid 



THE ALBANY CONVENTION OF 1861. 



179 



down, or whether, after all our sacrifices, those objects are to be 
frittered away, sold, compromised, surrendered. 

It is at once the glory and strength, and yet the weakness of 
our Government that it has no existence separate from the people, 
that it is but the shadow of the people, only a mirror wherein the 
will of the nation, expressed at the ballot-box, is seen and re- 
flected. No administration at Washington can retain its vigor and 
vitality unless the people by their votes show their approval of its 
acts. ' 

It may and it must remain in possession of the Government 
for the four years for which it was elected, but it will drag out a 
helpless, useless existence unless it is sustained. If you want it 
to make use of vigorous measures of war, you must say so by 
your votes. The ballot-box is a trumpet through which the Con- 
stitution bids you speak, and your voice, thus uttered, will never 
be disregarded. The President and his Cabinet will not, they can- 
not, be deaf to it ; they are on trial at the approaching election. 
They hang upon that election for the very means of affirmative 
existence. * * * It is the duty of all to look and see who 
they are who have seized upon the organization of the Democratic 
party and rushed out in the hour of the country's agony to snatch 
the control of its affairs. 

Mr. Conkling thus described the Albany Con- 
vention of 1861 : 

They are men who have once been trusted and thoroughly 
tried, and their fidelity and capacity to manage the Government 
have been tested also. They were allowed to rule the country long; 
that is, their associates at the South ruled it, and they were con- 
tent to be the pedal attachment, and that rule has culminated in 
a rebellion which has drenched the land with blood and covered it 
with mourning. 

A wail from the battle-field and from the homes which death 
has entered comes up to us to remember the men who connived 
for years at incipient treason, and are now in their harangues and 
public journals heaping indecent abuse upon the Government 
which has been striving to repair the ruin they might have averted. 



l8o LIFE AND LETTERS OF IWSCOE CONK LING. 

These managers are seeking to inflame evil passions and to lash 
into fury all the elements of public discontent. Their doings de- 
mand a scrutiny of their history. 

****** -x- 

When rebellion actually began, what did they do? Many loyal 
Democrats came nobly out and planted themselves by the side of 
the country. But those who clung to the party organization, what 
did they do? A month before Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated, they 
held a State convention for the Democratic party of the State of 
New York. It was said, it was to save the country — it was whis- 
pered it was to save the party. The State Committee called it, 
and representative men gathered to attend it. ^ Six States had an- 
nounced their intention to go out of the Union. \ Treason was 
rampant in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet and in every'branch of the 
public service. Conspiracy flaunted in both Houses of Congress. 
Conspirators peered from behind every pillar, and lurked in every 
hiding-place. The Catilines were taking their soundings to see 
how far it would be safe to wade into the red sea of revolution. 
A plan was discovered to seize Washington and to proclaim a 
revolutionary government from the steps of the capitol. Dismay 
was everywhere, when the representatives of the once proud De- 
mocracy of the Empire State assembled to cast their weight into 
the trembling balance. 

******* 

They applauded to the echo the very blasphemy of treason, 
but they attempted, by points of order, to silence DeWitt Clin- 
ton's son because he dared to raise his voice for the Constitution 
of his country and to call Rebellion by its proper name.^ *0<'^^^' ^ 

Lest all this may sound incredible, I refer to the pamphlet 
proceedings of the Convention. It comes from the Democratic 
mint and bears the stamp of "Comstock & Cassidy." That makes 
it as genuine as if it had the private mark of Peter Cagger. There 
is as much disloyalty in it as there was in Andre's boot. 



[Here Mr. Conkling read a portion of a speech 
at the Albany Convention.] 



AN UNWORTHY DESPA TCH. \ g I 

One month after the Democratic party had thus exhibited its 
sense of duty, Mr. Lincoln succeeded to a Government which had 
been robbed, betrayed and prostrated by Mr. Buchanan's admin- 
istration, and condemned at the bloody assizes of the Democratic 
party. Did he make war on Democrats or do anything to provoke 
their hostility ? On the contrary, he sacrificed all but his duty to 
conciliate and disarm opposition. 

******* 

Again this year these same agitators have held a State con- 
vention. They needed an endorser of established credit, and they 
got Fernando Wood— Fernando Wood, who, after the Rebellion 
had actually begun, regretted that he could not send arms to the 
South, and telegraphed to Georgia the sorrow he felt, as Mayor of 
New York, that muskets should have been seized by the police of 
that city while on their way South to be used for the slaughter of 
Union men. Here is his dispatch : 

New York, January 24, 1861. 
Hon. Robert Toombs, Milledgeville, Ga. : 

In reply to your dispatch, I regret to j^y that arms intended for and con- 
signed to the State of Georgia have been seized by the police of this State, 
but that the city of New York is in no way responsible for the outrage. 

As mayor I have no authority over the police. If I had the power I should 
summarily pmtish the authors of this ILLEGAL AND unjustifiable seizure of 
private property, 

Fernando Wood. 

Where in the doings which Fernando Wood endorses is the pa- 
triotism, where is the hearty, manly love of country and detesta- 
tion of its destroyers ? The proceedings of the Convention, and 
the proclamation of the rebel Gen. Lee in Maryland, appeared 
in the papers of the same day, and if the headings had not been 
different the whole thing would have read well together as parts 
of the same indictment against the Government and its sup- 
porters. 

******* 

The President's proclamation of liberty to slaves offers strong 
inducements to every Southern district which can get up even the 
forrn of a Congressional election to do so, and there is no know- 
ing the number of half loyal localities from which seats will be 



1 82 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

claimed. If a majority of one can be obtained for the opposition, 
an opposition Speaker will be chosen, and he will appoint an op- 
position Committee of Ways and Means, and your Government 
will be prostrate at the feet of that Committee. You are aware 
that the Constitution requires all appropriations of money, and 
consequently of men, to originate in the House of Representa- 
tives and not in the Senate, and the Committee of Ways and 
Means is the source from which the Government must receive its 
sinews of war, or not receive them at all. 

So far as regards a speedy and vigorous termination of the 
effort to quell the Rebellion, you might as well wheel up a can- 
non and blow the Administration to atoms as to emasculate it by 
allowing its opponents to obtain a majority in Congress. All this 
is seen and felt. It was very frankly confessed the other day at 
the " side show " of the Democratic Convention. You know some 
of the tenders of that concern went to Troy and held a supple- 
mental convention; they held it as wolves in sheep's clothing, un- 
der the name of a " Union " convention, and they called Mr. 
Noxon to preside. On taking the chair, he said : "We have had 
enough of this war ; blood enough has been spilt ; the country has 
suffered enough, and we have an abundance of expenses. Let us 
stop this war. We shall not get rid of it unless we have a change 
in our members of Congress.'^ 

For one, I am for the Union and the Government uncon- 
ditionally, come what may. I would rather see rebel cities smoke, 
I would rather see New Orleans the bed of a lake where fishes 
would swim, I would rather see the seats of treason unpeopled 
from the Potomac to the Gulf, than that one star should be blotted 
from the flag of our fathers, or one stripe torn from its azure 
folds. 

But men in Congress have been neglecting their duties to talk 
about negroes, we are told. 

The speaker concluded as follows : 

Mr. Chairman, if I may be pardoned for alluding to the hum- 
ble part I have acted in these scenes, I will make a single state- 
ment. During my service in Congress I never, by word or by act^ 



A PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 1 83 

have introduced the subject of the negro or of slavery, never save 
once, and that was whcfi I offered a resolution, which the President 
drew with his own hatid and recommended Congress to adopt. I 
presented it without one word or syllable for or against it, and 
moved that a quiet, silent vote be taken on it by yeas and nays. 
It was an old subject, familiar to all, and I believed discussion 
would only stir bad blood. But see the result ! The motion for 
the previous question was angrily opposed, but not by Republi- 
cans ; divisions were called for and debate insisted on. Every 
Democrat in the House voted for discussion; they succeeded in 
opening debate, and plunged into violent declamation, which con- 
tinued for two or three days, with more bitterness than has been 
seen in the House since the fire-eaters left it. 

****•«• * •?«■ 

Fellow-citizens, the success of the war is staked on the ballot- 
box. Our brothers in the field are bravely doing their duty — see 
to it that those at home do theirs. The Administration party in 
the county and State have lost largely by enlistments ; the great 
majority of those who have gone are the supporters of the Presi- 
dent, and our opponents are calculating largely on this advantage 
at the polls. To be safe we must see that every vote is in the 
box. If you are confident of an easy majority in this county, 
work just as hard as if it was in danger. We need emphatic ma- 
jorities, and besides, a vote in this county helps the State ticket as 
much as if cast in a locality where the majority is doubtful. If 
we do our duty all will be well ; if we fail in our political duty now, 
it will be a blunder and a crime. 

This was a memorable canvass for Roscoe 
Conkling. His opponent, Francis Kernan, was, 
excepting Horatio Seymour (who was about to be 
elected Governor), the strongest candidate that 
the Democrats could have nominated. It was a 
hard fight for Mr. Conkling, for he had to contend 
against enemies in the Republican party. Through 



184 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the machinations of a renegade Republican and 
his gang — a man who, while a Whig, Mr. Conkling 
had warmly supported — it seemed impossible for 
him to win. This adversary threw obstacles in 
the way of the Welsh population, an important ele- 
ment in Oneida County, and who were chiefly Re- 
publicans, which prevented the casting of a full vote. 
Mr. Conkling afterward estimated that he thus lost 
nearly 300 votes. Moreover, a draft for 300,000 
men had been ordered in August, and many of his 
friends had gone to the front, while the Democrats 
stayed at home to support their party, believing that 

" Peace hath her victories 
No less renowned than war." 

Thus, facing fearful odds, with many of his 
friends absent as soldiers from the district, Mr. 
Conkling made a spirited canvass and fought 
with credit to himself.^^* 

Unfortunately for the Republicans a reaction 
against the conduct of the war had arisen, and both 
Secretary Stanton and Congress were attacked. 

The election occurred November 4. The State 
of New York, which in i860 had elected a Union 
ticket by a majority of 50,000, went Democratic, 

* In the ensuing year a statute was passed allowing soldiers to vote in 
the field by making oath as to their choice before a commissioned officer, 
then sealing the ticket in an envelope and forwarding it to the district in 
which the elector resided. This law stood the Republicans of New York 
in good stead in 1864, when President Lincoln and Mr. Conkling were 
re-elected. 



DEFEATED BY MR. KERN AN. 1 85 

and chose Horatio Seymour for Governor by, lo,- 
752, over General James S. Wadsworth, the Re- 
pubUcan candidate. In Oneida County the ma- 
jority for the Repubhcan Governor was reduced 
to 481, General Wadsworth receiving but 10,143 
votes. 

The total vote for member of Congress was 
19,788, of which Francis Kernan received 9,943, 
and Roscoe Conkling, 9,845; the latter thus being 
defeated by ninety-eight votes. 

It should be stated that Mr. Kernan had pledged 
himself to support all constitutional measures for 
the prevention of the civil war. 

The third session of the Thirty-seventh Con- 
gress began December i, 1862, and the same 
day Roscoe Conkling offered a resolution to 
place gunboats upon Lake Ontario, and the other 
great lakes, which was promptly adopted without 
a division. 

On the fifteenth of December resolutions en- 
dorsing the President and the policy of emancipa- 
tion were offered. After some opposition they 
were adopted by a vote of seventy-eight yeas to 
fifty-one nays. The Messrs. Conkling, of course, 
voted yea. 

On January 7, 1863, the bankruptcy bill was 
read in extenso. Roscoe Conklinof at once ob- 
tained the floor and spoke at some length, giving 



1 86 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONK LING. 

3. history of the subject both at home and abroad. 
The following is a brief extract from his remarks : 

In turning to the practices of other nations, we find that we 
are the only Commercial State, I believe the only one in Christen- 
dom, without a system of bankruptcy. * * * The resources of 
the nation should be invigorated and unlocked, even though in- 
dividuals may be the losers. * * * Whenever a system of bank- 
ruptcy is inaugurated — and there must be a beginning — it must be 
undertaken with a certain knowledge that in the shoal of men 
who rush for relief there will be a large percentage destitute of 
merit. This is inevitable, but I deny that the percentage will be 
larger now than at any other time. On the contrary, I think, if 
it were worth while, reasons could be given for the belief that it 
would be less than it might be hereafter. 

On January 20 and February 3 the bankrupt 
law was again brought up, but after brief discus- 
sion it was laid on the table. 

On February 20 Mr. Conkling voted against a 
bill " to provide a national currency, secured by 
pledge of United States stocks, and to provide for 
the circulation and redemption thereof." 

On the twenty-sixth day of February, 1863, re- 
garding the bill to increase the number of general 

officers, he said : 

****** * 

One of my chief sources of satisfaction since I have had the 
honor of a seat upon this floor has been voting persistently against 
every measure unnecessarily creating a new office, raising a sal- 
ary, or devoting to any use a penny of the public which I thought 
could be spared. If I believed this measure unnecessary or un- 
avoidable, I should be against it. 

******* 

Mr. Chairman, I do not often differ with my colleague, but I 



SOME WITTY REMARKS. 1 87 

differ now as to the willingness he avows to vote for a bill restrict- 
ing transactions in gold, if the Secretary of the Treasury should 
recommend it. I would not vote for such a bill. * * * i 
think it would be an idle attempt to defy the teachings of all his- 
tory. See what it is proposed to do. In the first place we issue 
paper money. Then we provide that everybody shall take it at 
par. Then we provide that there shall be no other money; this 
is done by the bank bill, and is to be done by the tax on the cir- 
culation, which attempts are making to force through. Now the 
proposition is to forbid the use of gold and silver, and we are told 
in new-fangled, mystifying phrases that the coin has become ^'■de- 
monetized^' that it is not "mobilized," and new terms are poured 
upon us to throw dust into our eyes, 

Mr. Vallandigham: Gold-dust. (Laughter.) 

Mr. Roscoe Conkling : No, sir, no dust of that kind ; any kind 
but that. Gold, we are told, has become a "commodity," not 
money, and therefore must be tabooed; we must prohibit trans- 
actions in it to keep paper up ; that is the same farce that has 
been repeatedly played in history. 

A Member : Transactions on time ? 

Mr. Roscoe Conkling : I do not care whether on time or on 
eternity. (Laughter.) It is just what our forefathers did in the 
time of Continental money. First they issued paper money. 
Then they said that everybody should take it. Then that every- 
body should take it at par. Finally they took the same step 
we are about to take, in the same false logic that controls us now. 
* * * And what became of it ? It sank so low * * * 
that it was not worth a shilling a peck, despite all their enactments. 
* * * * ^ * * 

Mr. White, of Indiana: Does the gentleman recollect how long 
the laws of Lycurgus substituting iron money for gold had effect ? 

Mr. Roscoe Conkling : Lycurgus was an early friend of mine, 
but much my senior. He was always reserved with me about his 
money matters (laughter), and therefore I do not know as much 
about his currency as I wish I did. The chairman of the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means says he knows the Lycurgus alluded 
to and that he lives in Missouri. (Laughter.) I had reference 
to another man. 



1 88 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Roscoe Conkling was a staunch supporter of 
Abraham Lincoln. In the autumn of 1862 the 
President had received a check at the polls, not 
only in the Empire State, but in various parts of 
the North. Mr. Conkling- believed that the suc- 
cessful termination of the war could be achieved 
only through the re-election of Mr. Lincoln. 



I 863-1 865. 
CHAPTER XII. ^ 

HE RESUMES LAW PRACTICE PATRIOTIC MEETINGS — 

ADDRESSES HIS RENOMINATION AND ELECTION. 

ly/TR. CONKLING'S second term in Congress 
having expired March 4, 1863, he returned 
to Utica and soon resumed the practice of his 
profession. On leaving Washington he spent a 
few days in the city of New York. He received 
an invitation signed by Mayor Opdyke and many 
leading citizens asking him to name a day when 
a complimentary dinner could be tendered to him. 
In reply he suggested " to-morrow as a convenient 
time" (March 12), and accordingly the banquet 
took place at Delmonico's. When the cloth was 
removed, the Mayor, who presided, made a brief 
address, to which Mr. Conkling responded. He 
began with some humorous remarks and then 
spoke in a patriotic strain. The several toasts 
were replied to by the Hon. David Dudley Field, 
General John Cochrane, Mr. John Jay and others. 
On March 20 a meeting of the National Loyal 

League was held at the Cooper Institute in New 

189 



190 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 



York. Mr. Conkling was one of the four speakers, 
and we give below a short extract from his re- 
marks : 

* * * You come as the heirs of a priceless and imperilled 
birthright, the defenders of an endangered nationality. * * * 

You come as the guardians of a mild and nurturing Government 
assailed by parricides aud assassins, and your mission here is not 
to recast political parties, but to embalm in the hearts of your 
countrymen those institutions of equality and freedom in which 
the freest and best elements of existing systems are blended with 
the revelations and experience of buried centuries and epochs. 

Eighty years ago our fathers braved, for seven years, the 

greatest power on earth and endured all the hardships and pangs 

of civilized war, with the added horrors of the tomahawk and 

scalping-knife. They were sustained by an unfaltering purpose. 

What was it ? It was to plant the tree of constitutional liberty 

for all. 

■X- * * * ^f * * 

Why should there be, how can there be, any difference now be- 
tween those who are honestly for God and their country ? " Why," 
says one, " there are acts of the Administration that I cannot ap- 
prove of." * * * I advocated the election of Mr. Lincoln to 
the Presidency. I voted for him, and, as the representative in Con- 
gress of a proud and loyal constituency, I have always endeavored 
to sustain and uphold his Administration. I have confidence in 
him, and yet there are a great many things which the Administra- 
tion has done that I do not approve of. But is that any reason 
why I should not stand by it and hold up its hands even to the 
uttermost? ["No, No."] Why, if you think you have a poor 
administration, so much the more it is your duty to help it along, 
* * * If you cannot sustain Mr. Lincoln for any other reason, 
sustain him because he is President. Go for the crown, if it hangs 
on a bush. 

On the twelfth of April, 1S63, which was the 
Sumter anniversary, the National Loyal League 



MR. VALLANDIGHAM, OF OHIO. I9I 

again held a mass meeting on Union Square, New 
York. Among others, Mr. Conkhng made a stir- 
ring speech, which was well received by the thou- 
sands of hearers. At Mechanics' Hall, Utica, Mr. 
Conkling, on May 26, spoke a third time at the 
Cojivention of the Loyal Leagues, to which dele- 
gates from every county in the State were invited 
to attend. New York was divided into eight dis- 
tricts, and Roscoe Conkling was one of the two 
members from the fifth district upon the Com- 
mittee on Address and Resolutions. 

In his speech he discussed the recent arrest of 
his former Congressional associate, Clement L. 
Vallandigham, of Ohio, charged with publicly 
counselling resistance to the laws. Vallandigham 
was tried and convicted. He then applied to a 
Democratic judge, who issued a writ of habeas 
corpus; but upon its return a judgment was ren- 
dered which held that he had been properly arrest- 
ed, and that the case was one in which the judicial 
power ought not to interfere. This decision ex- 
cited the " Copperheads " of the city of New York, 
and led to indignation meetings. 

Referring to these latter proceedings Mr. Conk- 
ling said : 

The whole swarm of sharks and pestilent beings — men who, 
long before anybody had been arbitrarily arrested; men who, long 
before one single act had occurred, except the issue by the Presi- 



192 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CO NR' LING. 



dent of his proclamation in which he called for seventy-five 
thousand men to preserve from instant extinction your nationality, 
the very symbols, archives and vestiges of it— when the Presi- 
dent had done only that, these men reared their heads in base de- 
nunciation. The whole swarm cries out " Treason!" and indigna- 
tion meetings are held — indignation meetings which, when they 
were opened, required word to be sent to the officers of our brave 
volunteers to keep them away, lest their indignation should termi- 
nate the proceedings. The same men who will not let the soldiers 
vote [Applause] justify the Executive of the State in sending to 
the Senate a message or a political diatribe, which I believe he 
had no right to send, because no document had been sent him to 
sign ; but upon his own deliberation he stalks into the Senate with 
a threat that he will veto their action if they take a certain course. 
I say it was an act which no House of Commons in England would 
have submitted to from that which cut off Charles's head. [Ap- 
plause.] But these men, I say, who want to exclude the soldiers 
from voting; who send to officers of regiments to prevent soldiers 
coming to their meetings; those whose pride it ought to be, every 
day and every night, to reward the heroic ones for their services 
in the field [Applause] ; the men, who are still outraging public 
sentiment and trampling upon the rights of the most patriotic 
ones in the community, have assembled and stand forth bravely 
as the elected champions of free speech. Who are these men 
who are so anxious about the God-given right of free speech? 
Men have taken part in these indignation meetings, who, I will 
say — and I will prove it — men have taken part in these meetings, 
making speeches, and sending messages to arouse the worst pas- 
sions of the populace, who, within two years and a half, have met 
secretly, clandestinely, and at night, to arrange to mob a woman 
because she sought, in a hall which she hired herself, to talk to a 
few old maids about free speech. But, my fellow-citizens, it is 
one of the characteristics of this unholy rebellion that you and I 
are compelled to sit down meekly as disciples of free speech at 
the feet of those who have for thirty years trampled upon every 
element of that right. [Applause.] No matter, I did not mean 
to multiply so many words about that. [" Go on!"] Now I am 
entirely of opinion — as much so as any gentleman in this room — 



LETTER FROM MR. THROOP. 



19: 



that we ought not to be induced, even to seem — not even to seem, 
for I would have not only the esse but the videri of the thing — ■ 
not to seem to give one single inch to the rant and fustian and 
clamor of these men. They wanted to pick a flaw and have 
taken this step to do it. They would array popular passion and 
prejudice against this Administration, and have seized upon this 
thing in order to do it. I know they are hypocrites and they know 
they are. 

Mr. Conkling now gave himself up to the prac- 
tice of his ]ong--neglected profession. We have 
seen that before going to Congress he was one of 
the ablest advocates in Central New York ; that 
he was a '' cause getting " lawyer before a jury ; 
and that when he was retained in a case, the most 
eminent counselors of the Oneida and Herkimer 
Circuits were engaged to oppose him. 

In 1862 he had dissolved partnership with Mont- 
gomery H. Throop, and in the same year he asked 
Robert Earl, of Herkimer, to become his associate. 
Mr. Earl accepted the proposal, but owing to ill- 
health was obliged to withdraw. 

Hence Mr. Conkling remained alone in practice 
for some eight years. As to his ability as a law- 
yer, the following letter from his former partner 
may interest the reader. 



302 State Street, Albany, May 27, i! 
My Dear Sir : I never heard either Daniel Webster or Rufus 
Choate ; I have often heard Joshua A. Spencer, and * * * 
I have often sat through trials conducted by him. I think that 
Mr. Conkling was a much stronger trial lawyer than Mr. Spencer. 
13 



194 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

I purposely use the word "trial" instead of "jury," because Mr. 
Conkling was not only unexcelled in presenting his cause to a 
jury, but he had a quickness and readiness of resources in all the 
emergencies of a trial, however sudden and unexpected, which it 
is no exaggeration to characterize as wonderful. It mattered not 
what unexpected and adverse circumstance occurred — unforeseen 
testimony from his opponent, the breaking down of his own wit- 
ness, a hostile intimation from the judge or a juror, or the like — 
he was always quick and ready to meet it ; always " fell upon his 
feet," and either parried it or, not unfrequently, turned it to his 
own benefit. 

•?{•***** v:- 

But as a trial lawyer, as respects either the examination and 
cross-examination of witnesses, the summing up of the cause to 
the jury, and the general management of a trial, I never saw his 
equal, or any approach to his equal, for readiness, fertility of re- 
sources, quickness of apprehension, tact, perseverance, persua- 
siveness, brilliant eloquence, and every other quality which enables 
a man to shine on such an occasion. And I, who say this, was, 
during the years I was with him, better qualified than any other 
person to judge upon such points, for I always knew, v/hat his skill 
concealed from others, where the weak point was. 

Yours very truly, 

Montgomery H. Throop. 
A. R. Conkling, Esq, 

In consequence of this facility, and in fact 
g"enius, in cross-examination and in addressing 
juries, which he shared with his old preceptor, 
Joshua A. Spencer, he often said to a legal 
brother, " My proper place is to be before twelve 
men in the box." His thorough preparation of 
the law of both sides of a case generally gave him 
an advantage over his opponents, and he almost 
always had something in reserve, which he brought 



A HOSTILE JUDGE. 1 95 

out at the proper time. He could do and say the 
right thing at the right moment, and thus was 
never " cornered" in court. 

This genius for cross-examination in the face of 
pubHc opinion and serious obstacles was never 
better shown than in the Budge murder trial, and 
in the court-martial of Major Haddock, which 
will be fully described on succeeding pages. 

His shrewdness and courage in the presence of 
a hostile and impatient judge were well displayed 
in the defence of one Evans, who was indicted 
for arson in Lewis County. At the trial it was 
proved that the prisoner had been tracked in the 
snow for the distance of eight miles. Concerning 
the shape of his boots there was some doubt in 
the mind of the witnesses for the people. Finally 
Mr. Conkling cross-examined the maker of the 
boots in question. He testified that the heels were 
small and pointed. The counsel for the accused 
repeated his question (as was his habit when he 
believed the witness was mistaken) and said, " Are 
you sure that the boots were of such a shape ?" 
Here the Judge (LeRoy Morgan) interrupted and 
said, " Mr. Conkling, we've had enough of this." 
Thereupon the latter replied, " Will the clerk please 
enter what the court has just stated?/' The record 
was made and read to the Judge, who did not sus- 
pect the aim of the counsel. Now it so happened 



lg6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

that the boots were not mated, and that one heel 
was big and the other small and sharp. 

When the Judge was charging the jury, and 
reference was made to the character of the foot- 
prints in the snow, Mr. Conkling interposed, re- 
minding his Honor that he had not permitted him 
to proceed on cross-examination and bring out 
the facts. This incident ended the case, and the 
court directed an acquittal. There is reason to 
believe that if the District-Attorney had known 
what Mr. Conkling's point was, the prisoner would 
have been convicted. 

The next important case in which Mr. Conkling 
engaged was that of Charles E. Hopson, who, in 
July, 1863, was arrested as a deserter by the pro- 
vost-marshal of the Oneida Congressional district. 

Mr. Conkling, being authorized to appear for 
the Government, made an elaborate opening argu- 
ment. He was followed by the Hon. Francis Ker- 
nan for the prisoner. In reply to the points raised 
by Mr. Kernan, he argued at some length. The 
case involved a conflict between the national and 
State tribunals, and required serious examination. 
On August 25 Judge Bacon rendered an opinion 
to the efifect that " the order for an attachment is 
vacated, the writ of habeas corpits is discharged, 
and the prisoner is to remain in the custody of the 
provost-marshal to be dealt with according to law." 



AN ALLEGED DESERTER. 



197 



An appeal from this decision was taken to the 
General Term of the Supreme Court, but upon 
the questions involved these judges were equally- 
divided, and hence there was no authoritative 
statement of the law in this case. It is found in 
Barbour's reports. Although Mr. Conkling's 
argument is interesting to lawyers, it is too long 
to print, and an extract would be unsatisfactory ; 
suffice it to say that it is a most complete vindica- 
tion of the course taken by the Government in re- 
gard to deserters. Referring to the victory of 
Roscoe Conkling, Judge Bacon, in a recent letter 
to the author, says: ^ -^ -^ "The ability with 
which Mr. Conkling argued the question entirely 
changed my original impression, and deserves 
commemoration." 

Four days after the argument, but, of course, 
before the decision, Mr. Conkling wrote the fol- 
lowing letter. It shows his constant watch for 
the welfare of the Government. 

Utica, August II, 1863. 
Sir : Referring to your dispatch and letter, which I acknowl- 
edged at the time by mail, I have the honor to inform you that 
the case of Hopson, an alleged deserter, has been very fully 
argued, and, it is hoped, with favorable effect. Judge Bacon is 
preparing an opinion which, I think, will reverse his original de- 
cision and be very satisfactory to the Government. 

***** 4f * 

I take leave to say, and I will thank you to show this to Mr. 
Stanton, that I am persuaded the draft should take place in this 



198 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

district at the earliest day for which it can be arranged. Through- 
out the State each day of delay not absolutely necessary is hurt- 
ful in many ways. 

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

The Provost-Marshal General, Washington, D. C. 

In September he again appeared for the Govern- 
ment in two habeas corpus cases arising under the 
draft. The aro^uments were heard bv the Hon. 
Nathan K. Hall (the successor of Judge Conkling) 
in the United States District Court. 

During the autumn it does not appear that Mr. 
Conkhng took an active part in poUtics. On No- 
vember 3 the election was held and the State 
ticket of the Republican party was chosen. 

In 1864 Roscoe Conkling, while holding no 
official position, was vigilant of the interests and 
comfort of the soldiers, as shown by his letters on 
file in the War Department. 

On the twenty-sixth of February, 1864, a mass 
convention of prominent Union men of Oneida 
County assembled at Rome. Mr. Conkling was 
one of a committee of eight appointed to draft 
and report resolutions. The Convention adopted 
six resolutions, which endorsed warmly the course 
of President Lincoln and recommended his re- 
nomination by the coming National Convention. 

The attitude of the Union men of Oneida, and 
especially of Mr. Conkling, is interesting in view 



LETTER FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



199 



of the opposition to Lincoln among disaffected 
Republicans, which afterward manifested itself 
in the call for an independent convention at 
Cleveland, Ohio,"^" just before the regular Repub- 
lican National Convention of Baltimore. Senti- 
mental, self-styled leaders in the party had raised 
the cry of " Anything-to-beat-Lincoln !" but, for- 
tunately for the welfare of the Union, this oppo- 
sition soon collapsed, for at the Baltimore Con- 
vention June 7 the liberator of four million men 
was nominated by acclamation after Missouri had 
cast her twenty-two votes for Grant. 

During- the summer some dissatisfied Republi- 
cans opposed the renomination of Mr. Conkling. 
His intimate friend, the Hon. Ward Hunt, wrote 
to the President and received the following reply : 

Executive Mansion, ) 
Washington, Aug. 16, 1864. \ 
Hon. Ward Hunt : 

My Dear Sir : Yours of the 9th inst. was duly received, and 
submitted to Secretary Seward. He makes a response, which I 
herewith enclose to you. I add for myself that I am for the regu- 
lar nominee in all cases, and that no one could be more satisfac- 
tory to me as the nominee in that district than Mr. Conkling. I 
do not mean to say there are not others as good as he in the dis- 
trict, but I think I know him to be at least good enough. 

Yours truly, 

A. Lincoln. 



* Here Generals John C. Fremont and John Cochrane, of New York, 

were nominated. 



200 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Republican sentimentalists were trying to in- 
duce Lincoln to withdraw, for they entertained 
the delusion that he could not be re-elected. In 
reply to the call for a new convention, Mr. Conk- 
ling wrote the following letters to John Austin 
Stevens, Jr. : 

Utica, August 24, 1864. 

My Dear Sir: Yours of yesterday is at hand with its enclosure. 

I do not approve of the call or of the movement, and cannot sign 
it; for that reason, of course, I cannot present it to others to sign. 

This being my position, it would not be proper nor agreeable 
to others that I should be present at the conference you speak of, 
so I must deny myself the pleasure of meeting gentlemen for 
whom personally I have the highest regard. 

Can you be right in saying that the private conversation of 
gentlemen was telegraphed to Washington ? 

Will you be kind enough to tell me particularly what there is 
of this — what was telegraphed ? and what proof have you of it ? 

I have a special reason for wanting to know, and shall be 
obliged to you if you will take the trouble to give me particulars. 

Your friend and servant, 

R. CONKLING. 

John Austin Stevens, Jr., Esqr. 

Utica, August 28, 1864. 

My Dear Sir : I have the pleasure to acknowledge yours of 
day before yesterday. 

I can hardly comprehend, or even credit, on any supposition, 
how all you say can have taken place. But you seem to have 
proof enough to show the danger of doing anything in these times 
except minding one's own business. 

You may rely on the " call " never making its public appear- 
ance through me, but I want to say now, while it is yet in season, 
to prophesy that the whole thing will be out, not in one place, but 
all over, presently, and I don't know why it is not now. 



A TRUTHFUL PREDICTION. 20I 

Several days ago a gentleman here mentioned to me that he 
had received a call (it was the same you sent to me) from a per- 
son in your city, with whom he had no special relationship, politi- 
cally or otherwise, with a request to obtain signatures. So much 
for so much. 

You can all consult your convenience and ease in the prosecution 
of what you propose, I think, for tve are dropping down-stream 
with a rapidity which will make your landing, whether you paddle or 
not. Your friend, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

On the day after Roscoe Conkling- wrote the 
above letter, his brother Frederick, who was 
the colonel of the Eighty-fourth New York Vol- 
unteers — a regiment raised at his own expense — 
received the following interesting order from Sec- 
retary Stanton : 

War Department, ) 

Washington City, August 29, 1864. ) 
Col. Conkling, Eighty-fourth Regiment, Neiu York: 
Colonel: This Department has been informed that a rebel 
officer is harbored or concealed at or near The Pines, near Seneca; 
that a gang of horse thieves are encamped or resort near there; 
that a large contraband trade is carried on, and persons are en- 
gaged in the manufacture of rebel uniforms, and other disloyal 
practices. You are directed to use the utmost efforts to arrest 
the officer, seize, try and execute all marauders and horse thieves, 
and seize, try and execute all persons engaged in contraband 
trade or giving aid to the rebels. 

Yours, &c., 
Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. 

The Democratic National Convention met at 
Chicago on the same day (August 29), and, upon 

a platform which declared "the war a failure," 



202 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

nominated General George B. McClellan for 
President and George H. Pendleton for Vice- 
President. 

Mr. Conkling- was renominated for Congress by 
a convention held at Rome, September 22, 1864; 
and he asked to be allowed to decline the nomina- 
tion in a speech in which he said : 

I cannot conceal nor can I express the gratification your cor- 
diality awakens. The nomination you have bestowed and the 
warmth with which you greet me add another to unnumbered acts 
of generosity and kindness received at the hands of my neighbors. 

For months past friends have constantly brought me flattering 
and urgent assurances that the Union people of the district de- 
sired me again to represent them, and I cannot deny that these 
assurances, followed by a spontaneous nomination, have given me 
much satisfaction. * * * Your nomination is equivalent to 
an election. If there has ever been any doubt of this district, it 
has vanished before Sherman and Hancock and Farragut and 
Grant and Phil Sheridan, and the glorious soldiers with them, who 
are just now " interfering in elections " and sending dismay into 
that party whose only chance of triumph must come out of defeat 
of the Union arms. 

You have therefore only to nominate a man true to the cause 
and fit for the place, and above all suspicion of venality, and his 
election is secure. There is no lack of such candidates ; there 
are names at your command which will abundantly satisfy all 
Union men and reflect credit upon the district. 

/ therefore beg the Convention to allow me to decline the nomina- 
tion, to retain my place in the ranks, where I will do any duty you 
inay lay upon me, now and in the future. My interest and inclina- 
tion are so much averse to a continuance in ptjlitical life that you 
must allow me to retire. 

In conclusion, allow me to assure you that I shall ever grate- 
fully cherish you and the people of Oneida County as over-indul- 
gent friends. 



DECLINES A RENOMINA TION. 203 

The only portion of Mr. Conkling's remarks 
which were not received with favor was that an- 
nouncing his dechnation. C. T. Pooler, of Mar- 
shall, immediately rose and moved that his nomi- 
nation be reaffirmed by acclamation. The motion 
was unanimously carried, with applause from all 
parts of the house. 

It is due to Mr. Conkling to say that in addition 
to his renomination by the Convention after he had 
declined, delegates and others gathered around 
him and insisted that he should be their candidate. 

Six days after his nomination Mr. Conkling 
spoke in support of President Lincoln at Devereux 
Hall in the town of Oneida. He denounced the 
Rebellion, advocated a continuance of the war, 
and declared the great importance of the then 
impending election, saying that the life of the 
nation and the existence of f-ee institutions de- 
pended on the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. He 
held that with the re-election of Mr. Lincoln the 
Rebellion would be overcome, and contended that 
" a cessation of hostilities," which was the key-note 
of the Democratic campaign of that year, was noth- 
ing else than a lure with which to trick and cheat 
the nation into a recognition of the Confederacy. 

Mr. Conkling's prestige as a local leader was 
not injured by his defeat in 1862. With advanc- 
ing years his temperament changed slightly. The 



204 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

exactions of legal life, and, to some extent, the 
needs of his political experience, apparently 
estranged him from the masses, although he was 
naturally one of the most approachable of men. 
His opportunities as an advocate were constantly 
enlarged, but political leadership was thrust upon 
him, and he soon became the legatee of William 
H. Seward. This was, perhaps, assured by his 
steadfast support of Lincoln. 

In this campaign (1864) Mr. Conkling's chances 
of election were greatly aided by the valuable 
support of the New York newspapers that were 
identified with the Union cause. Enthusiastic and 
whole-hearted appeals to the people of the Oneida 
district appeared in their editorial columns, repre- 
senting him to be " undeniably one of the ablest 
and most devotedly loyal men in the State, fear- 
less and eloquent, possessing experience, and a 
staunch supporter of Mr. Lincoln's administra- 
tion." Among the newspapers extending their aid 
were the New York Tribune, then edited by Hor- 
ace Greeley; the New York Ti7nes, edited by Henry 
J. Raymond ; and the New York Evcnmg Post, 
directed by the veteran William Cullen Bryant. 

The religious press of the State, speaking through 
the New York Independe^U, advocated in the same 
editorial article the election of Roscoe Conkling 
in Oneida County, and George William Curtis on 



THE HOME OF SEYMOUR. 205 

Staten Island. Both of them, it will be remem- 
bered, afterward appeared at the Rochester State 
Convention of the year 1877 where Mr. Conkling 
criticised Mr. Curtis for his political course. 

The following letters were addressed to John 
Austin Stevens, of New York: 

Utica, Oct. 8, 1864. 

My Dear Sir : I have a stiff fight for Congress in this district 
with three or four men, in our ranks ostensibly, who two years 
ago cost Gen. Wadsworth and myself many votes in this district 
— about 250 or 300. The operation is again to be attempted, and 
I want, as far as I can properly have it, the aid and sympathy of our 
leading friends and journals. The Evening Post had a most friend- 
ly and handsome paragraph the other day, which was of service. 

Knowing your intimate and influential relationship with the 
Post, and elsewhere all around you, I venture to ask you to look 
over the " Record " I enclose, that you may see what sort of com- 
petitor I have, &c., &c., and to ask you further that you give me 
any aid you can by press or suggestion. 

" The home of Seymour" is a place in which we need all the 
help we can get at best, and now the operation which the opposi- 
tion have started to get and use m.oney makes it especially need- 
ful to have the sympathy of our leading friends. 

If this will trouble you, dismiss it ; but if not, I shall be very 
greatly indebted if you will give me a lift. 

Your friend, 

RoscoE Conkling. 

Utica, Oct. 10, 1864. 
My Dear Sir : I have your two notes. Suffice it now to say, 
in the haste of this moment — I thank you. 
The Tribune needs no urging. 

I trust I may yet be able to show you how thoroughly I appre- 
ciate your good-will. Your friend, 

R. Conkling. 



206 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The Daily Wisconsin, of Milwaukee, in the 
edition of Friday, October 21, 1864, paid Roscoe 
Conkling the following compliment : 

******* 

On the great question of the issue of " legal-tender " Treasury 
notes, Mr. Conkling proved himself to be a statesman of the first 
class. We cordially hope that the people of Oneida will re-elect 
this gifted man to Congress by an overwhelming majority. At 
the present crisis such men are needed in public trusts. 

The same article referred to the fact that he 
had repeatedly told the President that the federal 
troops could not succeed in Virginia while Gen- 
eral McClellan was in command. 

During the autumn Mr. Conkling frankly said 
to his brother-in-law (Horatio Seymour), " Gov- 
ernor, you'll be defeated and I'll be elected/' 
For several weeks he devoted his untiring energy 
as an organizer and orator to the cause of the 
Union ticket, for, as is stated in another part 
of this volume, he was not tenacious of the word 
" Republican." The reader will remember that 
the County Convention which nominated Mr. 
Conkling bore the name Union. 

At the election in November, he was success- 
ful by a majority of 1,150 votes. His great 
triumph became apparent early in the evening, 
and in response to impatient and repeated calls, he 
soon made his appearance on the platform of Con- 
cert Hall (where Republicans were receiving the 



RECEIVES MANY DEMOCRATIC VOTES. 



207 



returns) amidst a tornado of welcoming applause. 
He entertained his audience in his happiest style 
for nearly two hours. 

At length the special train from Boonville 
arrived, bringing returns which showed in that 
town 735 majority for Conkling. Cheers and 
hand - shakings followed, while cannon boomed 
outside and bonfires blazed. 

An active politician in Utica tells the author that 
in the autumnal election of 1864 Roscoe Conk- 
ling received nearly one-third of the Democratic 
vote of the county. It is strange that while he 
was always one of the fiercest and most unsparing 
assailants of the Democratic party, many of his 
most profound admirers were the Democrats of 
Oneida. 

After his promotion to the Senate it was often 
remarked that if the votes of his Democratic 
townsmen could have made Mr. Conkling Presi- 
dent of the United States he would have reached 
that distinction. 

Mr. Conkling's next conspicuous appearance in 
public was in the libel suit of Sawyer verszcs Van 
Wyck. 

This is one of the series of cases to which we 
referred on page 121, and which would be given 
to illustrate the assimilating power of Mr. Conk- 
ling's mind. It was the first case of the kind that 



208 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

came to him, and, so far as we know, his first libel 
suit. After his resumption of legal practice in 
the city of New York, he defended libel cases 
against the New York World successfully ; and 
these will be described in the latter part of this 
volume. The plaintiff in the suit of Sawyer vs. 
Van Wyck was a clergyman and a critic of the 
Bible. He had just written a book entitled Re- 
construction of Biblical Theories ; or, Biblical Sci- 
ence Imp'-oved. 

The defendant was the proprietor of the Chris- 
tian Intelligencer, which was published in the city 
of New York. In March, 1863, he printed a brief 
but unfavorable review of the work, and recom- 
mended "that the author go, without delay, to 
Natal, and assist the bewildered bishop of that 
enlightened colony, or else remove to England 
and take orders in the Established Church." Ac- 
cordingly the Rev. Mr. Sawyer sued the newspaper 
for libel, and the case was tried in February, 1864, 
when the jury failed to agree. The Hon. Gerrit 
Smith appeared for the plaintiff. One year later 
the suit was again brought to trial before the Hon. 
Joseph Mullin in the city of Utica. The point 
at issue was whether a man who denied the in- 
spiration of the Scriptures and of their vital doc- 
trines was libelled if called an infidel. 

Roscoe Conkling defended Mr. Van Wyck, 



A THEOLOGICAL LIBEL SUIT 2O9 

The charge of the judge was favorable to the de- 
fendant, and the jury, being out less than ten 
minutes, returned with the verdict " no cause for 
action." 

It is worthy of remark that Mr. Conkling's ser- 
vices were virtually gratuitous. His argument 
was published, together with a complimentary 
editorial, in the Christian Intelligencer of March 
2, 1865, from which we give an extract : 

May it please the Court, 

Gentlemen of the jury : The apparent parties to this controversy 
are but two individuals. The one seeks the other's money ; and 
the immediate question is whether he shall have it or no. In this 
view the case is like all others between man and man. But, in a 
graver sense, it is one case picked out of ten thousand. Indeed, 
if its like ever came into court before, it has left no trace in the 
records of the law. 

The counsel for the plaintiff says it involves the right to speak 
the truth. It does involve that right as now enjoyed by every 
man and woman in the State. But it involves a great deal more. 
A verdict for the plaintiff would affirm, not only that the truth 
may not be published, but that a religious teacher may not warn 
his own flock against false doctrines and false professors ; that a 
disciple of the cross may not defend by words the doctrines which 
his Master died to immortalize and sanctify. 

The plaintiff asserts for himself, and no one denies it, the right 
of complete freedom and belief and disbelief. * * * He 
holds and publishes dogmas which may be abhorrent to the Chris- 
tian world and shocking to the sense and consciences of men, and 
in the eye of human law he is void of offence in doing so. He can 
be tried before but one earthly tribunal, and that is the bar of pub- 
lic opinion. That temple has till now been open since free govern- 
ment began, but the hinges so long rusted must creak again, and the 
doors be closed, if this action can stand before an American jury. 
14 



2IO LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

The Constitution of the United States, which, despite libel 
suits and rebellion, still lives as the supreme law of the land, gives 
the plaintiff a guaranty that he and his descendants and converts 
shall forever enjoy complete liberty in religious belief, and the 
right is theirs also to proclaim any doctrines to the world ; but 
the same Constitution says that the freedom of the press shall 
never die, and that the defendant may speak as he deserves of 
every man who thrusts his theories before the public. 

The parties take their stands under these conditions. The 
plaintiff chooses to become a theological pugilist ; he seeks pub- 
lic religious controversy ; he enters the arena of dispute ; he as- 
sails sacred things ; he wounds the keenest sensibilities ; he levels 
his blows at the devout, the inoffensive and the unresisting ; he 
plants himself upon new positions and challenges all comers ; he 
gets worsted or he creates less sensation than he expected, and he 
takes refuge in court and asks damages against a man who has 
scratched him with a pen — a pen ! the very weapon he himself 
has wielded to destroy tranquillity, to unsettle faith, to darken 
hope, to put out that only light which burns unquenched amid 
the deadly vapors of the tomb. 

Here Mr. Conkling analyzed the testimony at 
great length. Although this case created much 
popular interest at the time, a full report of his 
long argument seems undesirable. Having com- 
mented upon the evidence, he thus concluded : 

Gentlemen, a verdict is asked in this case, not for wounded 
feelings ; not for any annoyance the plaintiff may have felt at the 
mention made of him ; not for any injury he has sustained in his 
personal standing or reputation ; not for diminished sale of any 
books or publications in which he may be interested ; not for loss 
of caste as clergyman, or preacher, or even as a business man. 
All these things are shut out of the case by the allegations and 
omissions of the complaint. 

The sole ground of action is alleged damage to the reputation 
of the plaintiff as a Biblical author. No malice is proved, but all 



SAWYER VS. VAN IVYCA'. 211 

malice is disproved ; therefore smart-money cannot be asked, but 
only strict compensation. I have endeavored to show you that he 
is just such a Biblical author as the Christian Intelligencer pro- 
nounced him. 

If he is, the defendant would not have been liable even had 
his paper been the means of first assigning the plaintiff his true 
position before the public. I want now to show you that the 
notoriety of the plaintiff as an infidel is not due at all to the de- 
fendant, or to the libel here complained of, but to very different 

causes. 

Long before the twenty-sixth of March, 1863, the time the 
libel was published, Mr. Sawyer formally and publicly withdrew 
from all fellowship with the Presbyterian and Congregational 
churches. He did not do so, however, until after repeated avow- 
als, not made in confidence or secrecy, to Dr. Fowler and to 
others, that he had ceased to hold the creed he formerly espoused. 
Having loosened himself from ecclesiastical ties, he became an ex- 
horter in a secular audience-room in Boston, of assemblages which 
he styled a '' Catholic Congregational Society." This society 
claimed no relationship to any established church or sect ; it was 
composed entirely of infidels and backsliders from Christian faith, 
and the discourses delivered unfolded the sentiments which have 
been read from Biblical Science Improved and from Mark, and 
which you have heard avowed by the plaintiff as a witness. Mr. 
Sawyer thus became a self-proclaimed apostate from faith to free- 
thinking. 

******* 

So far did all these eccentricities lend fragrance to the repu- 
tation of the plaintiff that, as he tells us, newspapers— not Sunday 
papers, or orthodox papers, or religious papers, but secular papers 
—rejected his communications and refused to admit him into their 
columns ; and this for the reason that they regarded his produc- 
tions as infidel in character. 

An attempt was made to show that the New York Independent 
printed his articles nearly as late as March, 1863, but on cross- 
examination it appeared that, the Rev. Dr. Cuyler having de- 
nounced him in the Independent, he claimed the right to be heard 
in reply; this of course was accorded him, and, save on this occa- 



212 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

sion, it is years since anything from Mr. Sawyer lias been allowed 
to appear in any paper except the Boston Investigator. 

Thus it will be seen that, having assumed, the character of a 
skeptic, this gentleman has managed, long before the Intelligencer 
noticed him, to bring himself into the very white of the public 
eye. 

Among the missionaries and other adherents of the Dutch Re- 
formed Church who comprise the readers of the defendant's jour- 
nal there was no field for the plaintiff, after all this, as a Biblical 
author, and therefore no substantial harm came to him from the 
notice he received. If, therefore, the words had not been justified, 
the damages would have been only nominal, but we were called 
upon to justify in order to defend against even nominal damages. 

Gentlemen, I have done. The case for the defendant is with 
you, and upon it I ask a verdict which shall shield the rights of 
all ; which shall assert the freedom of the press ; which shall ac- 
cord to the plaintiff, and to all of us, absolute liberty in matters 
of religion ; which shall say to whom it may concern that those 
who get into fisticuffs about theology, or attempt publicly to pom- 
mel religion, must abide by the rules of the ring, and not expect 
juries, if they get hurt, to poultice their bruises. 



i865. 
CHAPTER XIII. 

THE HADDOCK COURT-MARTIAL. 

'T^HE basis of this celebrated trial is found in the 
•^ following letter from Mr. Conkling to the 
Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, then Secretary of War, 
and to the Provost-Marshal General. It seems to 
have been the first note of warning to the Govern- 
ment, and " the hand-writing on the wall " to the 
whole army of bounty brokers, with their con- 
federates and coadjutors. 

Utica, N. Y., January 28, 1865. 

Sir : I have the honor to ask attention to impediments which 
Major Haddock, A. A. Provost-Marshal General at Elmira, puts 
in the way of recruiting here, and which have become so great as 
to baffle the efforts of Supervisors, Ptovost-Marshal, and all the 
rest who are trying to forward enlistments. 

In the first place, he requires that five-eighths of the local 
bounty shall be withheld from the volunteer and sent to Elmira 
to him or a person there designated by him. At Elmira the 
recruit is paid twenty dollars and the balance is sent to the front, 
there to be first paid, and the soldier to take the chances of find- 
ing an opportunity to send it back here. 

This restriction, whether designed for good or not, will not be 
accepted by the men who want to enlist, nor by Supervisors and 



214 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

others who raise the money. The soldiers want to have the money 
for wives and parents, so as to arrange before they start. 

In the next place, Major Haddock peremptorily requires the 
local bounties to be forwarded exclusively in greenbacks or notes of 
national banks. We cannot get these by any possibility, although 
we have been and are paying a premium for all we can lay hold of. 

These things, with some others, have greatly retarded us in 
filling our quota, which Major Haddock some weeks ago tele- 
graphed here and wrote was 275, which he has varied twice since, 
and which turns out to be 1044, after the regulations which we have 
been put under, and the information we received from Major Had- 
dock, had substantially put an end to the business of recruiting. 

I most earnestly ask, writing as I do at the request of commit- 
tees and other patriotic citizens, that such action may be taken 
that we shall be allowed a mode of proceeding more practicable 
and reasonable. 

We can get men, and, we think, good men, if we are allowed to. 
******* 

I have the honor to be, your ob't serv't, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

To the Secretary of War and the Provost-Marshal Gen- 
eral, Washington, D. C* 

*That Mr. Conkling took a warm interest in the welfare of the soldiers 
long previous to this date is shown by the following correspondence : 

[Copy.] 

Utica, N. Y. , January 9, '64. 

My Dear Sir: I am sorry to add to your troubles, but the condition of 
the volunteers from this State who have been sent to Elmira demands im- 
mediate attention. 

Col. Diven has, I think, done aJl he could, and I don't write in a spirit 
of fault-finding toward anyone. But in the present intense weather many 
men from this county and elsewhere have been kept there for two weeks 
and upwards without overcoats, and with no shelter in which there is a Jire 
and which they can occupy during the day. 

They are told to make fires out-doors and warm themselves in that way. 

This is the account brought back by those who go and come, and beside 
the suffering of the men, other most injurious effects flow from it. 

Can't there be other rendezvous established in the State ? We have ac- 
commodations here, and they have elsewhere. 



FRAUDS IN THE RECRUITING SERVICE. 



215 



Extensive and pernicious frauds in the recruit- 
ing service in the Western Division of New York 
having" become known to the pubhc, as well as to 
the authorities, detectives were sent from Wash- 
ington to different places in the Division to watch 
the proceedings there in the bureau of the Pro- 
vost-Marshal General. These officers several times 
visited Utica and called upon Mr. Conkling as one 
of those to whom they had been directed to dis- 
close their errand, and sought such information as 
could be given them of places and persons. Their 
investigations convinced them of a wide-spread 
system of plunder and unlawful gain emanating 
from Elmira, or at least receiving sanction there. 

The facts which they had gathered, and some 
discoveries made by Mr. Conkling. proved conclu- 
sively that the tax-payers of many districts were 

But I won't suggest ; suffice it to say that the tale that comes from El- 
mira will not bear repetition. Let something be done quickly. 

Your friend, etc., etc., 

R. Conkling. 
Hon. E. M. Stanton. 

[Copy.] 

War Department, ) 

Washington City, 4:40 p. m., January 13, 1864. ) 
Hon. RoscoE Conkling, Utica, N. Y. 

Your letter was received to-day, and was the first intimation that any. 
thing was needed at Elmira. I have despatched an officer to correct the 
evil, and will punish anyone who has been guilty of neglect or misconduct 
in the premises. I thank you for your kindness in apprising me of the 
condition of things. 

Edwin M. Stanton. 



2l6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

robbed, recruits and their families swindled, 
and the military service demoralized and de- 
graded ; and this not merely by adventurers and 
avowed speculators in the public distress, but by 
those who controlled official action. 

Of all these things Mr. Conkling duly informed 
the authorities. The officers also reported the re- 
sults of their inquiries, and still further investiga- 
tions were ordered and made. 

Mr. Conkling thus states his first connection 
with the affair : 

* * * Unexpectedly, as I was leaving home to keep a pro- 
fessional engagement in another direction, a telegraphic dispatch 
was received from the Secretary of War requesting me to come to 
Washington at once. No intimation was given of the occasion of 
the summons or of the subject to which it related. 

Upon reaching Washington I was for the first time informed 
that the Acting Assistant Provost-Marshal General at Elmirahad 
been removed, and his successor named, and that he was to be 
arrested and tried for frauds and corrupt complicities in the ad- 
ministration of his office. 

Many papers relating to the matter were submitted to me, and 
among them a report by an inspector of the regular army, then 
lately returned from detail to visit Elmira and other places in the 
Western Division of New York, in which occurs the following ex- 
tract : 

I have the honor to report further that, incident to the inspection of 
the twenty-first district, facts in relation to the administration of Major 
Haddock, A. A. P.-M. General for Western Division of New York, were 
adduced which led me to the conviction that he is unfit for the position he 
holds. Men of undoubted character charge him with being insolent and 
abusive in discharging his duties and grossly immoral; that he is in col- 
lusion with bounty brokers, and prostitutes his official position to personal 
ends. 



APPOINTED JUDGE-AD VOCA TE. 2 I 7 

The Secretary of War requested me to act as counsel for the 
United States in the prosecution contemplated, and to conduct the 
prosecution of Major Haddock. The suggestion was new entirely, 
the retainer was not desirable, and could not be acceptable without 
serious injury to more profitable professional employment. I pro- 
posed in my stead, an eminent lawyer known to the Department, 
and also suggested the question of the selection of any civilian to 
act as judge-advocate. It was the wish of the Secretary of War, 
however, that I should execute his request, and I undertook to do 
so. Directions were given me to reduce to form the charges and 
specifications against Major Haddock without loss of time, and 
subsequently the following orders were received.* 



War Department, 
Washington City, April 3, 1865. 



\ 



Sir : I am instructed by the Secretary of War to authorize you to in- 
vestigate all cases of fraud in the Provost-Marshal's Department of the 
Western Division of New York, and all misdemeanors connected with re- 
cruiting. 

You will from time to time make report to this Department of the prog- 
ress of your labors, and will apply for any special authority for which you 
may have occasion. The Judge-Advocate General will be instructed to is- 
sue to you an appointment as Special Judge-Advocate for the prosecution 
of any cases that may be brought before a military tribunal. You will also 
appear, in behalf of this Department, in any cases that it may be deemed 
more expedient to bring before the civil tribunals. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

C. A. Dana, Asst. Sec. of War. 



\ 



Hon. RoscoE Conkling. 

War Department, 
Washington City, April 3, 1865. 
The Honorable Roscoe Conkling, having been appointed by the Secre- 
tary of War to investigate transactions connected with recruiting in the 
Western Division of New York, all telegraph companies and operators are 
respectfully requested to afford him access to any despatches which he may 
require, for the purpose of detecting frauds and bringing criminals to pun- 
ishment. 

By order of the Secretary of War. 

C. A. Dana, Ass't Secretary of War. 

* These letters are dated on the same day that the Union troops entered 
Richmond. A R. C. 



2l8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

War Department, ) 

Washington City, April 3, 1865. ) 
The Honorable Roscoe Conkling having been appointed by the Secre- 
tary of War to investigate transactions connected with recruiting in the 
Western Division of New York, all Provost-Marshals and other military 
officers are hereby directed to give him free access to all their official records 
and correspondence, and to furnish him certified copies of any papers that 
he may require. 

By order of the Secretary ok War. 

C. A. Dana, Ass't Secretary of War. 

No time was lost in carrying forward the examination, and on 
the fourteenth of April last the charges and specifications were 
forwarded to the Department, with a letter, from which the fol- 
lowing is an extract : 

This place (Utica) or Syracuse would, if designated as the place of 
trial, be convenient for witnesses, but I fear it might be, or at least might 
seem, more harsh toward Major Haddock than Elmira or New York City. 
I suggest, therefore, that as far as the public interest will allow, a place be 
fixed for the trial where Major Haddock cannot suffer from any local feeling 
peculiar to that place. 

This suggestion was made for the reason that it had been left 
to me to recommend the place at which the court should convene. 

So much for the origin of the accusations against Major Had- 
dock, and so much for the history of my connection with the court. 

Until the assembling of this court at Elmira, Major Haddock 
was a total stranger to me. I had never known him, or even seen 
him, to my remembrance, nor had I ever had any transaction with 
him whatever. My sole knowledge of him arose from investigat- 
ing or observing the modes in which bounty-jumpers and swindlers 
plied their vocation. My sole feeling towards him arose from the 
same cause. What that feeling was, and how my attention was 
turned to the matter in which it arose, will appear in part by the 
following facts. 

In 1864 the tax of Oneida County (the twenty-first district) 
was one million, seven hundred and four thousand, seven hundred 
and eleven dollars and thirty-one cents ($1,704,711.31). This tax 
was nearly all raised to pay bounty to soldiers. It amounted, in 
the case of some towns, to nearly twenty-five per cent, of all tax- 
able property. In such instances one-quarter of the substance of 



BOUNTY FRAUDS IN ONEIDA COUNTY. 



219 



the people, at its assessed value, went in a single year, without a 
grudge, from open hands, to support the Government and provide 
for the soldier and his fam_ily. Prior to the last call for troops 
(December 19, 1864), Oneida County had furnished about 7,000 
men, and a large part of their bounties had been fraudulently 
swept away. 

******* 

Saying nothing of 210 credits believed to have been cancelled 
or withheld by Major Haddock, 783 was the whole number of men 
demanded under the call of December 19, 1864. Yet the exac- 
tions were so managed, and the facts so far in the confidential 
keeping of bounty brokers, that about 1,200 men were paid for or 
are to be paid for. 1,148 have already been paid for, and a suf- 
ficient number remain to make the total 1,200. Here is an excess 
of 417. Seven hundred dollars per man was the usual sum paid, 
so that $291,000 or thereabouts has, under the last call alone, been 
wrung from an over-burdened community, and no ingenuity can 
cover up the motives and abuses by which the result was brought 
about. 

If the 210 credits already referred to be included, the excess 
of credits paid for will be 627, and the excess of money paid 
$438,900. Such was the tribute paid, not to the Government or 
to the soldier, but to bounty gamblers and their aiders, for fur- 
nishing "credits," not men, and this in the district of which I was 
not only a citizen, but the Representative. 

As the trial of Major Haddock had special ref- 
erence to the district which Mr. Conkling had rep- 
resented in Congress (and which he had again 
carried at the recent election), a brief account of 
the fraudulent drafts and enlistments there may 
be of interest. 

A statement of the methods employed in deal- 
ing with Oneida County will illustrate the man- 
ner in which this branch of the Government 



220 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

service was conducted. The quotas, in this last 
call of 500,000 men (December 19, 1864), were 
to be assessed so as to equalize the credits from 
the beginning of the war, thus requiring more 
from sub -districts, which had failed to supply 
their full share in previous calls, and less from 
those which had supplied more. Oneida County- 
had a surplus of 210 credits. There had been a 
long delay in sending the quota of the twenty-first 
district to the Provost-Marshal's office, and the 
Board of Supervisors had called a meeting to raise 
money for local bounties, when a bounty broker, 
recently from Major Haddock's office, came and 
proposed to make a contract with the Board to fill 
the quota of the entire district for a specified sum. 
He showed a letter from Major Haddock, which 
stated that the quota for the district would be 
nearly 1,200, but he would take his chances 
and fill it for $750,000. The Board passed a 
resolution accepting the offer, but before the con- 
tract was drawn a report came, via Rochester, 
that the quota for the twenty-first district was 
but 475. 

At Major Haddock's court-martial it was shown 
that, before the meeting of the Board of Super- 
visors, he had written to three bounty brokers 
that the quota was only 475, and that the credits 
would be reserved for their benefit if they sue- 



HO W THE FRA UDS OCCURRED. 221 

ceeded in getting the contract. This of course 
was not known at the Provost-Marshal's office in 
time to be of use; while about a week after the 
meeting of the Board an official letter was receiv- 
ed from General Fry stating that the quota for 
the district was 1,044. After the war the records 
of the War Department showed a surplus of nearly 
700 credits for the twenty-first district. This false 
quota caused an extra tax of $500,000 to be levied 
in Oneida County. 

On April 21, 1863, Joseph P. Richardson was, 
upon recommendation of Mr. Conkling, given the 
commission of Provost-Marshal for the Oneida 
Congressional district. In December, 1864, he was 
summarily removed by order of General Fry, 
whereupon Mr. Conkling at once wrote to the 
Provost-Marshal General and to the Assistant Sec- 
retary of War (Charles A. Dana), demanding that 
charges be preferred against Captain Richardson. 
No answer was given to Mr. Conkling's request. 
The vacancy was then filled by the appointment 
of Colonel Poole, who served a few weeks and 
was then reUeved by Peter B. Crandall, a former 
recruiting agent, who had not solicited this ap- 
pointment, and whose character was reported as 
very high. 

On January 24, he entered upon his duties as 
Provost-Marshal. So close was the pursuit of the 



222 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

deserters' money by Haddock that an order is in 
existence in his handwriting, dated Elmira, Jan- 
uary 24, 1865 (the very day on which Crandall be- 
gan his official duties), with the simple address of 
" Col.," which could not have been Crandall, as 
he was a captain, and which says, " When you 
come, bring with you all deserters' money in your 
possession." 

This money, by law, should have been paid 
over to the quartermaster of the district. Captain 
Crandall at first obeyed such orders as these, but 
finally resolved, after further consideration, and 
advice of eminent counsel, to refuse to forward 
this money to Haddock, and it was just this re- 
fusal of Captain Crandall to obey an illegal order 
that started, in fact, this whole investigation. 

Crandall served till March 13, 1865, having been 
summarily suspended March 1 1 by order of Ma- 
jor Haddock, who had lately succeeded General 
A. S. Diven. On March 4 he received from Had- 
dock an order directing him to pay over to a 
special agent (who was the Major's private sec- 
retary) " all moneys, bonds, or other securities 
whatever that might have been deposited in his 
hands by any enlisted man, broker, or agent to 
protect the Government against desertion," or that 
he might have received from any person what- 
soever in his capacity as Provost-Marshal. 



THE BOUNTY-JUMPERS. 22 3 

While acting as Provost-Marshal, Captain Cran- 
dall generally visited Mr. Conkling in the even- 
ing, and told him of the gross frauds in the bureau. 

The latter often said: "Don't, don't, Mr. Cran- 
dall! You don't know what a fight you'll get me 
into." Yet, at the same time, he was willing to 
hear more of it on the following evening. 

He dreaded the acquisition of a complete knowl- 
edge of the fraudulent drafts, for with the in- 
stincts of a prophet, and with that keen foresight 
which so characterized his subsequent career, he 
suspected that the Secretary of War would one day 
retain him to investigate the scandalous irregu- 
larities of the Provost-Marshal General's bureau. 

Captain Crandall had in his possession a long 
descriptive list of deserters from New York State 
regiments at Camp Seward, Auburn. The appli- 
cants would enlist, receive the $i,ioo bounty, di- 
vide it with the bounty brokers, and then escape 
from the rear of the camping-ground, for no guard 
was stationed there, as was the case at the front. 
Previous to their escape from Auburn, many of 
these recruits had deserted at Utica, Osweo^o, 
Watertown, Syracuse and other cities. Under 
assumed names they re-enlisted and received 
bounty at each place, deserting afterward, and 
hence were termed " bounty-jumpers." 

Upon enlistment a recruit would often deposit 



224 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

money, i. e., part of his bounty, in the hands of 
Captain Crandall, with the request that it be sent 
to his parents or his wife after he had been for- 
warded to Elmira, and thence, under orders of 
Major Haddock, transported to the seat of war. 
Crandall deposited this money in the bank and 
entered it to the recruit's credit in the cash-book. 

He usually held $500 till the recruit reported at 
the rendezvous-camp in Elmira. Then Major 
Haddock forwarded these soldiers to Virginia 
without giving them the balance of their bounty; 
hence these lately enlisted men would write from 
the field to Captain Crandall, who had originally 
enrolled them, and ask about the missing money. 

The following is a copy of one of these letters; 
written on paper furnished by the United States 
Christian Commission, and having at its head the 
following quotation : 

" This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." 

City Point, Virginia, March 20, 1865. 
Friend Mr. Crandal as I promised to write to you after I 
got to Elmira ^ve had better barracks than we had at Utica but 
I did not like the fare. We staid in Ehnira about ten days and 
then started for City Point. We have tents pitched within a mile 
of the point. We are expecting every day to go front can hear 
the guns fireing before Petersburg the Army is not more 10 
miles from our Camp. Thos 12 boys that came with me are well 
I drew a hundred dollars at Elmira and kept %\^ of it and sent 
the other $85 to you and if you will place it as the other is and I 



GRAND ALL RETAINS THE MONEY. 11^ 

will be much obliged did you see that the ring was sent home 

I would not loose it for anything that fellow never gave me a 

cent but lo dollars of the bounty I placed in his hands and part 

of that was bad please excuse bad wrighting and short letter as I 

burnt my hand and it bothers me considerable please answer soon 

and let me know what is going on in Utica you may think it 

strange that I did not put a stamp on the envelope but I could 

not get any as they are very Hard to get direct Cavalry depot 

near City Point Va. 

William H. Grigson, 

Many letters of similar import were received 
from newly enlisted men. Concerning the dis- 
posal of the money of the recruits, Crandall thrice 
wrote Major Haddock, urging in each case a reply. 
No answer came, but the Major gave Captain 
Crandall receipts for the money that he had sent. 

Soon afterward six recruits sued Crandall for 

failure to deliver the money (though it was no 

fault of his), and each recovered judgments for 

from three to five hundred dollars. Then eminent 

counsel (the Hon. Ward Hunt) advised Captain 

Crandall to cease sending the bounty balances. 

At this juncture Major Haddock became angry at 

the Captain's course, and the former suspended 

the latter for disobedience of orders, as we have 

seen. Meanwhile Haddock had made desperate 

efforts to obtain the money of the recruits, and to 

this end had sent his private secretary to Utica. 

The latter telegraphed to his master: " Crandall 

is honest; don't be worried about the money." 
15 



226 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

This was bad news to Haddock, for his emissary 
had come to Utica with orders to bring him the 
bounty. FaiHng in this, Major Haddock sent to 
Crandall, Captain Meredith, a paymaster in the 
army, with special orders to bring the money to 
Elmira. This officer went to Utica, asked for 
Captain Crandall, and in a dictatorial manner 
said: 

" Captain, here is Major Haddock's order to de- 
liver the money. You are bound to obey. If I 
order you to shoot that man (pointing to one) you 
must do it." Crandall replied: " I shall obey no 
such order to shoot any man, and I won't give the 
money to Major Haddock." At first Captain 
Meredith was angry, then he recovered himself 
and reported to his superior^at Elmira that " Cran- 
dall was all right." A few days later Colonel 
Baker, of the Secret Service, ordered the arrest of 
Crandall, but for some reason the following tele- 
gram was sent from Utica by the detective to 
General Fry: "You had better not arrest Captain 
Crandall." The order of suspension, signed by 
Haddock, had the desired effect. In May the 
Provost-Marshal General wrote him that his ser- 
vices were no longer required. 

Mr. Conkling had written, March 13, 1865, to 
Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, 
as follows: 



CRAND ALL'S REINSTA TEMENT. 227 

Captain Crandall was not selected by me, but I heartily con- 
curred in the selection. I should have picked him out of all the 
men presentable for the place as one whose purity would never 
even be suspected. 

His integrity is above all question, and I will do for him what 
I never in my life have done but once: I will be personally re- 
sponsible for him; and I take it upon myself to pronounce the 
charges you refer to infamously false. 

Mr. Conkling could not therefore conscientiously 
remain silent when a faithful and honest officer 
was thus consigned to oblivion, as he himself said, 
" for the reason solely that he could not be used 
by scoundrels." Accordingly he wrote a very 
warm and strong letter to Secretary Stanton, urg- 
ing his reinstatement. This was promised, but 
the Secretary was overwhelmed with work, and it 
never took place. 

The conclusion of this letter is worth quoting 
as showing the spirit that animated Mr. Conkling 
in this matter: 

Surrounded as you are by so many weightier matters, you 
may smile at my earnestness, but if you knew exactly what I 
know, your indignation would be as great as mine, and mine goes 
to just that extent that I feel, as to the Provost- Marshal General, 
that we are at the mercy and dictation of thieves; and if I live, 
and can do so, I will get to the bottom of this particular proceed- 
ing, and give it such ventilation as will conduce to the general 
health. 

President Lincoln had issued, December 19, 1864, 
a call for 500,000 men. The bounty and recruit 
brokers in the interior of New York had formed a 



228 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

gigantic conspiracy with Major Haddock, Assist- 
ant Provost-Marshal General of the Western Divi- 
sion of New York. 

Referring to the President's last call for troops, 
a member of the Cabinet* remarked: "Mr. Lin- 
coln, if recruiting goes forward in this way, your 
new call for troops will soon be answered;" where- 
upon the President replied: "Oh yes: we have a 
pretty big army already — on paper; but what we 
want is men in boots and breeches. This great 
array of figures, in respect to soldiers, is not go- 
ing to suppress the Rebellion. I want men who 
can carry muskets and eat hard-tack»" 

It appeared that previous to President Lincoln's 
last call for half a million men, the bounty brokers 
had been granted such facilities as to make the 
filling of quotas a very lucrative business. 

Subsequent events have shown that this last call 
was the result of premeditated and persistent ef- 
forts of a few persons to reap a rich harvest of 
plunder. It was known that bounty-jumping had 
rapidly increased during the supplying of the prev- 
ious call. Before this call was made, General 
Sherman had finished his victorious march to the 
sea, thereby cutting off, for the most part, the sup- 
plies of General Robert E. Lee. General Grant, in 
front, was forcing Lee's army toward Richmond. 

* Edwin M. Stanton. 



THE LAST DRAFT. 229 

Hence, with Sherman in the rear, General Lee 
was virtually surrounded and without a sufficient 
force for a general engagement. In such a junct- 
ure a movement was made in Congress to issue a 
call for more men. It was insisted that if 500,000 
more soldiers were put in the field, General Lee 
would at once surrender and the horrors of war 

would cease. 

President Lincoln is said to have thought the 
extra call unnecessary, and to have written Gen- 
eral Grant, receiving this reply: " There are all the 
men and munitions of war that are needed. In 
spite of the advice of the General of the army, the 
politicians persisted in urging this ■•humane" 
measure, until the President, under pressure, de- 
cided to issue the call. , 

Here was a fortunate state of affairs for united 
action on the part of bounty brokers and the re- 
cruiting department of the Government, The new 
men were not wanted by the officials in the War 
Department, for they had enough to do without 
guarding and drilling raw recruits. Large local 
bounties had to be paid in order to secure half 
a million men. The great armies about Rich- 
mond absorbed public attention, while the citizens 
of sub-districts were engrossed in finding enough 
soldiers to fill their quotas in order to avoid a 
draft. 



230 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The public mind was at that time too deeply 
engrossed in national affairs to be watching men 
in charge of the recruiting service. The officials 
of the War Department, being apprised of what 
was going on, determined to institute legal pro- 
ceedings against the culprits. We have already 
stated that Secretary Stanton persuaded Mr. 
Conkling to manage the matter for the Govern- 
ment. He, although disinclined to prosecute the 
bounty thieves, became, at the earnest solicitation 
of the Secretary of War, the attorney for the 
Government, and helped to save the Treasury 
about $200,000. This sum was obtained from the 
officer in charge at Camp Seward, Auburn, by the 
private secretary of Major Haddock, to be deliv- 
ered to him at Elmira. When he entered the 
Major's office with two satchels containing this 
large amount in greenbacks, they were seized by 
the military authorities, and the money was turned 
over to the Government.'^ 

Prior to the time when Roscoe Conkling was 
urged, or rather forced, to begin the prosecution 
of Major Haddock and the bounty thieves, he had 
no organized band of enemies. At home, as well 
as in Washington, no one commanded the respect, 

* Referring to these fraudulent drafts, Mr. Conkling afterward stated 
on the floor of Congress (April 24, 1866) that " out of 700,000 to 800,000 
men/<;r whom, not to whom, enormous bounties were paid, not to exceed 
300,000, I believe not 200,000, ever reached the front." 



THE TRIAL BEGINS. 23 I 

confidence and love of all more than he. No man 
ever entered upon an unpleasant task with purer 
motives and a stricter sense of duty than he did 
upon this. He felt in honor bound to defend his 
district ; and he did it, though well aware that the 
struggle would be a bitter one, and that it might 
reach persons above Major Haddock — officials 
in higher military and civil stations, yet he never 
shrunk from doing what he knew should be done. 
The acceptance of the position of Governmental 
prosecutor was probably the most important event 
of his career, for it w^as the beginning of an " ir- 
regular " warfare that may be said to have ended 
only with his life ; and it shaped essentially his 
subsequent course. 

He had in his possession many letters concern- 
ing fraudulent drafts and bounty-jumpers, some of 
which implicated men high in official station; and, 
in Mr. Conkling's opinion, the authors of these 
missives were responsible persons. 

The trial of Major Haddock began at Elmira 
May 22. The court was composed of Major- 
General J. C. Robinson, president ; Colonel Ed- 
mund L. Dana, 143d Pennsylvania Volunteers; 
Colonel John Irwin, 149th Pennsylvania Volun 
teers ; Brevet Colonel T. B. Hamilton, Sixty-sec- 
ond New York Volunteers ; Lieutenant-Colonel 
James Glenn, 149th Pennsylvania Volunteers; and 



Brevet Colonel John S. Hammell, Sixty-sixth New- 
York Volunteers. 

The accused objected to the Hon. Roscoe Conk- 
ling as judge-advocate, and as there was not a full 
court, Major G. W. Jones being absent, he claimed 
that therefore the members should not be sworn. 
The court-room was cleared for deliberation, and, 
upon being again opened, it was decided to go on 
without Major Jones. The court was then sworn 
by the judge-advocate, and the judge-advocate 
by the court, and Theodore F. Andrews became 
the reporter. The accused presented as counsel 
Judge Smith, of Utica, G. L. Smith, of Elmira, and 
Colonel George A. Woodward, Twenty-second 
Regiment, Veteran Reserve Corps (son of the 
recent candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania). 
The judge-advocate then read the charges and 
specifications. These were as follow-s : 

Charges against Major Haddock, Twelfth Regi- 
ment Veteran Reserve Corps, Acting Assistant 
Provost - Marshal General Western Division of 
New York : 

Charge first — Violation of the ninety-ninth article of war. 

" Art. 99. All crimes not capital, and all disorders and neg- 
lects which officers and soldiers may be guilty of, to the preju- 
dice of good order and military discipline, though not mentioned 
in the foregoing articles of war, are to be taken cognizance of by 
a general or regimental court-martial, according to the nature 
and degree of the offence, and be punished at their discretion." 



THE FORMAL CHARGES. 233 

This charge contained twenty-six specifications, 
which related chiefly to bribery and fraudulent 
drafts. 

Charge second— Violation of the eighty-third article of war, 
and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. 

"Art. 83. Any commissioned officer convicted, before a gen- 
eral court-martial, of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentle- 
man shall be dismissed the service." 

' Charge third— Violation of the eighty- fifth article of war, and 

fraud. 

"Art. 85. In all cases where a commissioned officer is cash- 
iered for cowardice or fraud, it shall be added in the sentence 
that the crime, name and place of abode, and punishment of the 
delinquent, be published in the newspapers in and about the 
camp, and of the particular State from which the offender came, 
or where he usually resides; after which it shall be deemed scan- 
dalous for an officer to associate with him." 

Charge fourth— Fraud: malfeasance in office: abuse of official 
powers: "complicity with bounty brokers in the Western Division 
of the State of New York: accepting presents and bribes; agree- 
ing to accept presents and bribes: proposing to accept presents 
and bribes; being interested pecuniarily in recruiting and filling 
quotas in the Western Division of the State of New York. 

In charges second, third and fourth the speci- 
fications correspond respectively to the same num- 
bers as set forth under charge first. 

The accused pleaded not guilty to each charge 
and to the specifications. 

The trial lasted sixteen days. At the end of 
the fourth day the venue was changed to Syra- 
cuse by order of the Secretary of War. On July 
6 the court again met, and on August i Judge 



234 ^/^'^ AND LETTERS OE ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Smith summed up for the defence. Judge-Advo- 
cate ConkHng then repUed, and on the next day- 
reviewed the testimony at great length. The 
arguments were promptly published in the Utica 
Herald. 

In giving an account of the trial, a witness, 
H. A. Dobson, says: 

I was a clerk in Haddock's office, having been appointed by 
his predecessor, General A. S. Diven. I did not like the change, 
especially as I soon found out that he was not honest. After a 
while, I began to take notes of some of his proceedings, hoping 
to lay them before some one, but as I did not know to whom to 
present them, I said nothing. Finally I sought a position in 
Washington, and secured an appointment in the War Department, 
and left Haddock just before the arrest was made. I did not 
know of the arrest, nor of the commencement of the trial at 
Elmira, until the court had adjourned to meet at Syracuse, nor 
did Mr. Conkling know that I had anything that would be of use 
to him. Seeing the case mentioned in some paper, I addressed 
a letter to the Judge- Advocate, not knowing who he was, and re- 
ceiving an inquiry from him, which I still have, asking me what 
I knew of certain facts. I proved to be a " missing link " in the 
chain of evidence, and was summoned before the court, and was 
kept there in attendance three weeks so as to prevent the intro- 
duction of testimony to offset mine by tools of Haddock. They 
tried to do this, but as I was in the court-room I was able to 
write notes to Mr. Conkling which led to such cross-examinations 
as completely upset the witnesses. 

* ■}{••?{■* * * -x- 

When I arrived at Syracuse, Mr. Conkling met me and took 
me to his hotel, and did not allow me to register, nor let me be 
seen by the defence, nor by anj^ of the witnesses for the defence. 
I staid in my room until wanted, a day or two after my arrival. 
Mr. Conkling evidently thought that my testimony was very im- 
portant, for he sent the Marshal for me, with instructions to bring 



MR. DOB SON'S STATEMENT. 



235 



me to the door and then let him know that I was there, which was 
done. Mr, Conkling then said he had one more witness to in- 
troduce, and arose, looked at the court significantly, and then at 
Haddock, stepped to the door, paused, and again looked at Had- 
dock, until he had the attention of the court upon him, when he 
opened the door and led me in, stopping me just where Haddock 
couid see me. He had completely forgotten me until he saw me, 
and he gave a start, turned pale, and immediately began to talk in 
an excited manner to Colonel Woodward, his counsel. This was 
told me; that is, that part which occurred before I came in. I 
saw him start, and saw him pale. 

I assisted Mr. Conkling in the preparation of his papers each 
night after the court adjourned, so as to keep busy, and became 
well acquainted with him, and gained a warm friend, and a true 
one, by my conduct in the case, 

^ * * •X- * * * 

One of the most exciting episodes of the trial was the cross- 
examination of Smith.' The court ordered that all persons 
who knew that they were to be witnesses should remain outside 
of the room until they were called. Smith knew that he was to 
be a witness, yet he remained, ostensibly as well as actually, the 
counsel for Haddock. When Mr. Conkling began to cross-ex- 
amine him, and to bring out his illegal doings in connection with 
the putting in of substitutes. Smith became very angry, menaced 
Mr. Conkling, who remained perfectly cool, though he became 
pale from suppressed anger and excitement; that kind that gave 
him that clear penetrating thrust, as clean as a rapier, when he 
spoke, and so violent did Smith become that the court, in view of 
the protection asked by Smith from the court from such ques- 
tions, requested Mr. Conkling to tell the court what he expected 
to develop by his questions. Mr. Conkling arose as cool as could 
be and said, " May it please the honorable court: It is the prov- 
ince of the judge-advocate to show the character of the witness, 
to break his evidence by showing him to be infamous, and if the 
court please, the judge advocate proposes to prove this witness to 
be infamous by his own testimony." Smith sprang to his feet 
and shouted, " I defy you ! " and shook his fist at Mr. Conkling, 
whose eyes flashed and whose hand closed in a way to show that 



236 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

if he had the opportunity at a proper time and place, he would 
have made short work of Smith. The court interfered and ordered 
Smith to resume his seat and to behave himself. Then began the 
series of questions, each one pressed home like a knife, which 
brought out the fact that he had admitted men in the county jail 
under charge of murder to be brought before him for the purpose 
of giving bail, and that he bailed them on condition that they enlist 
as substitutes. 

Captain Crandall, in his account of the trial, 

says : 

Judge Smith, of Oneida County, was Major Haddock's counsel 
as well as his most trusted witness before the court-martial. I felt 
from the beginning of the trial a great curiosity to hear Judge 
Smith's testimony and his cross-examination by Mr. Conkling. 
When the time came, in giving in his direct testimony if Mr. Conk- 
ling raised any objections or made any remark. Smith would turn 
to him with a look of defiance and contempt. When turned over 
for cross-examination Mr. Conkling asked, "Are you County 
Judge of Oneida County?" Answer, "Yes." Question. "As 
County Judge, was it your duty to appoint three Commissioners of 
Excise?" A. "Yes." Q. "Were these Commissioners authorized 
to appoint an attorney to assist them?" A. "Yes," Q. "Did 
Mr. B pay you $500 to secure his appointment as such attor- 
ney?" A. "No." Q. " Are you positive on that point ?" A. 
"Yes." Q. " You cannot be mistaken ?" (Very indignant at the 
repetition). A. "No." (Mr. Conkling commenced turning a 
large bundle of papers, looking them all through with apparent 
disappointment; then, with seeming more care, commenced again 
to look over the bundle. Soon, with brightened expression, he 

drew out B 's receipt or check for the $500, reached it to 

Smith and asked, " Did you receive that amount ?" Smith's de- 
fiant expression changed, his face colored.) Q. " Will you answer 
my question V Not a word, Mr. Conkling turned toward the 
court, the answer came faintly—" Yes." Q. " Is Mr. Utley a 
law partner of yours ?" A. "Yes." Q. " Did you, as judge, let 
to bail, said Utley his bail, a desperado named Charles E. Norton, 



DEFENCE OF THE ACCUSED. 237 

who was in jail charged with burglary and theft, with the under- 
standing that he would enlist into the United States service and 
give said Utley the local bounty that was being paid ?" A. " No." 
Q. " Did you give the sheriff an order to take said Norton from 
jail to the Provost-Marshal's office ?" A. "No." Q. " Did you 
give the sheriff an order to take said Norton out of jail ?" A. 
"No." Q. "Are you certain you did not?" A. *'Yes." Q. 
" Certain that you gave no order to have him taken from jail, did 
not accept bail, nor favor his enlistment?" A. "Yes, certain." 
Mr. Conkling took up his bundle and drew out Judge Smith's order 
to the sheriff, the acceptance of Mr. Utley as bail, and passed it 
to Smith. Q. ''Is that your hand-writing, sir?" No answer, 
witness turned pale. Q. " Is that your hand-writing, sir?" (Mr. 
Conkling turned toward the Court.) A. "Yes." Q. "Judge 
Smith, did Major Haddock give you a statement of credits due 
the several sub-districts in Oneida County that had not been re- 
ported to the Provost-Marshal's office?" No answer. Mr. 
Conkling took, up his bundle of papers and commenced turning 
them over very deliberately. Answer — " Yes." This substan- 
tiated Richardson's confession to Mr. Conkling and was the lever 
that removed him from office. 

The defence was read by Judge Smith. It dis- 
closed an attempt to reconcile the obUgations of 
official character with unlawful gain by improper 
commerce with the bounty broker Richardson. 
It should be stated that there was imprudent inter- 
course between Haddock and Richardson, as well 
as grave irregularities that did not admit of de- 
fence. The counsel for the accused opened his 
argument with a formal objection that went to the 
legal organization of the court-martial. He sought 
to show that the judge-advocate, not the Secre- 
tary of War, was the real prosecutor. We have 



238 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

seen that Roscoe Conkling was directed by Secre- 
tary Stanton to draw up the necessary charges 
and specifications. 

Major Haddock's counsel reviewed each charge, 
and tried to explain away the grave accusations 
against his client ; for example, he attempted to 
throw the burden of a $2,000 bribe upon the 
broker rather than the officer. He discredited the 
agreements made with Richardson to divide the 
profits which were to come from the surplus 
credits. He asked the court to " pardon errors of 
judgment " and the " imperfection of human na- 
ture." 

In summing up he strove to break the force of 
each specification, and closed his argument with 
the following paragraph : 

The accused leaves now his case with the court with entire 
confidence. On its independence, firmness and sense of justice 
he depends as his sole reliance. He appears before judges who 
can have no motive but an impartial equity. 

Officers who have well and gallantly performed their part in 
the tragic strife that has saved a nation will not lay aside their 
swords to become the ministers of an unjust vengeance, nor strain 
fact or law to effect an undeserved conviction. They have helped 
to speed the thunder that has overwhelmed the enemies of the re- 
public, but they will be slow on the evidence in this case to blast 
the character of a faithful and loyal officer. In your present 
capacity, soldiers ! and judges ! you sit as successors to the ancient 
courts of chivalry, and you will recall that these were the judicial 
form of an institution whose generous boast it was, not only that it 
cherished honor, but that it also protected the weak and innocent 
from the oppressions of power, that in such courts to degrade a 



REVIEW OF THE TESTIMONY. 239 

knight by staining his reputation was more than taking his life, 
and that they required the evidence to be as conclusive, the guilt 
as clear, as if the accused were to be condemned to death. 

An eye-witness, who heard the " summing up " 
of Roscoe ConkUng at Syracuse, says : " I recollect 
Haddock's presence. His face streamed with per- 
spiration, and was so red that he appeared to "sweat 
blood," as many remarked. 

Mr. Conkling thus reviewed the testimony : 

May it please the Court : Happily for the honor of the military 
profession, and for the fair fame of our land, prosecutions such 
as this have, until of late, been unknown in our history. In olden 
time, and in later time, a commission in the army was a certificate 
of character and a passport everywhere. But the Rebellion, now 
ended, seems to have been appointed to illustrate, in manifold 
ways, the shame not less than the glory of humanity, A vessel 
tossed and groaning in a gale, a crew heroically manful, and a 
myriad of sharks following the ship — such is a faithful emblem of 
our condition during the mighty convulsion which has just sub- 
sided. The nation was in the last peril of existence. The conti- 
nent quaked under the tramp of an uncounted host, eager, from 
general to private, to suffer all, and dare all, for the salvation of 
the Government of their fathers. But with them came knaves, 
titled and even shoulder-strapped, a darkening cloud of vampires, 
gorging themselves upon the heart's blood of their country 
Shoddy contractors, bounty gamblers and base adventurers found 
their way even into the army, in order that they might the better, 
under patriotic pretensions, make to themselves gain of the woes 
of the community. And accordingly spectacles like this trial have 
come to be familiar to the public eye. Officers are put to the bar 
of justice for crimes deserving rank among the baser felonies. 
Whether such instances shall continue, depends largely upon the 
result of exposures of which this trial is a somewhat conspicuous 
one. It is the peculiar privilege of the army that its honor is con- 



240 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

fided to its own keeping solely. Infractions of its integrity are 
triable before soldiers alone, and thus the officers of the army be- 
come the guardians and avengers of its purity and honor. Such a 
prerogative is the property of no other profession, and it imposes 
responsibilities in the ratio of its exclusiveness. In one sense, 
this trial relates to the morale of the army. In another and a 
broader sense, it relates to the universal interest of the whole pub- 
lic. The war has ushered in an epoch of heroes and thieves. A 
carnival of venality has raged, until business connected with the 
Government has become one grand masquerade of fraud. Courts 
of every grade are kept open. The national jurisprudence, civil 
and military, is administered in splendid expense and with super- 
fluous appointment. Petty offenders and common culprits are the 
vermin destroyed by the great machinery of justice, while right 
is humbled and baffled, if not abashed, in the presence of crimi- 
nals too great to be punished. A prolific cause of this is the free- 
masonry of profitable crime. Accusations, such as you sit to 
try, usually involve, as they do in this case, the impunity of many 
men. The prosecution must encounter, as it has done here, classes 
and combinations ; and the result of pursuing offenders of such a 
grade, with the shrewdness, the money, the facilities they possess, 
is certain to be abortive unless special and exceptional effort s 
employed. Therefore, special and exceptional effort should be 
made. Whenever an instance occurs of guilt, traceable to one in 
an official station of power and sacredness, its exposure and pun- 
ishment is a triumph of right, which should be emphasized by 
every salutary lesson which the fact can be made to enforce. 

Such is, fortunately, the opinion of the Government. Such is 
the undoubting faith of him selected to conduct this prosecution. 

The arraignment of the accused proceeds upon the distinct 
avowal that it is not only justifiable and right, but the solemn duty 
of the Government to ferret out those iniquities which have marred 
the sublimest moral spectacle of all time. The prosecution illus- 
trates the principle that no partisanship of the criminal toward 
the Administration, that no chagrin which may be felt by the 
Government at the exposure of the fact that unfit men have been 
selected for high places, that nothing whatever, shall stand in the 
way of the detection and punishment of crime. But because 



STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 24I 

virilance has been employed in uncovering fraud and wrong, the 
„rs of the defence have seen fit to decorate me and even 
r Government, with their censure. A labored effort >s made to 
c'nfourd vigilarlce with persecution and injustice, and the resort 
whkh has been had to the evidence of a person mvolved ,n the 
mi conduct of the accused is made this occasion of censonous 
ZZ^l The counsel forget that this trial will stand alone 
aZnl military trials in the liberties and advantages accorded to 
Te de°fence A court composed of those who could have no b.as 
glinfthe accused was appointed at a place -ected from regard 
to his interest, and thronged with the creatures of •>- official favor 
three counsel were admitted, and have been allowed to argue to 
examine and to manage with unrestranied freedom, th<= *'«' 
witnes for the defence has been suffered, before bemg called h,m- 
f rhear all the testimony of opposing witnesses upon the very 
points upon which a witness should most be tested ; a copy of th 
record has been furnished the accused from day to day , an ex 
aordinary number of witnesses have been asked for and not a 
tnt, ho'wever obvious his uselessness, has ^een recused ; and 
at length having assented to readmg the record from the short 
ha d no^ , nnttl three weeks of extended record ad accumu- 
lated the accused was indulged in an objection he effect of 
Itch Ls, after the case for the prosecut.on »- ^ '^ ^ -^' 
to 2ive to the defence six weeks to prepare to meet . . and duiing 
hif ton. interval, the accused has had the range of the count . 
In a'u this lenity of the court the judge-advocate has fully 
concurred, but he protests against the attempt now to manu ac- 
ure anything from the case with which to deck m spe-ou d s 
t-uises the plea of " malice" and " persecution, that oldest ana 
So threaXblre resort of guilt. The true and only question is. 
What is established by the evidence? and to that inquiry imme- 
diate attention is invited. 

Here Mr. Conkling began to analyze the testi- 
mony piecemeal. He reviewed it under thirteen 
different heads, wherein he read many letters and 
despatches that passed between the prisoner and 



242 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the bounty brokers or their confederates. Major 
Haddock's self-incriminating letters were enough 
to convict him. 

Such is a rapid collocation of some of the main features of the 
testimony, and of the considerations suggested by it. 

The case is one requiring of the prosecution the clearest and 
most convincing evidence. Proof should always be strong and 
satisfactory in the same degree in which the guilt it indicates is 
enormous. The accused is peculiarly entitled to the benefit of 
this principle of reason and of law. The crimes imputed to him 
are both atrocious and detestable, and a great presumption of 
innocence belongs to him as an officer and a man. 

If guilty, his offence is nothing less than basely intriguing 
against the army, in the most critical period of its fate, and wield- 
ing the powers of a great official station against the life of the re- 
public itself. Is the accusation less heinous than this ? 

It is charged that when the army, thinned by battles and hard- 
ships, stood waiting for re-enforcements before closing with the 
enemy in the last grapple for the mastery ; when exhaustion and 
and divided sentiment in the loyal States told but too plainly that 
victory lost for a season would be lost forever ; when a call for 
three hundred thousand more men had been made, and the des- 
tiny of the cause hung upon the response — that then, while stand- 
ing in double trust as a soldier and as a high civil officer, the ac- 
cused, for a consideration, thwarted the efforts to succor his com- 
rades in the field, first by conniving at worthless enlistments, and 
second, by allowing recruits to be robbed, knowing that desertions 
and demoralization must follow. 

But yet more sinister acts are laid at his door. It is alleged 
against him that he conspired to take to himself the moneys by 
which the army and the Government subsisted, and to add exac- 
tions to taxes, making them too grievous to be borne, and this at 
a time when pecuniary disorders were about to solve disastrously 
the whole problem of the war. The range of such perfidy is 
bounded only by its power of mischief, and perhaps no man in the 
nation, save only the Provost-Marshal General himself, held greater 



A FORCIBLE " SUMMING- UP." 243 

sway for good or evil in the special field of alleged malfeasance 
than he who presided with autocratic discretion over one-third of 
the State of New York. * * * 

This trial and its result may be looked at by those who come 
after us as a straw denoting currents in the decadence or the re- 
generation of public morals. Should it be ever so recurred to, 
each one who has acted his part in it decently and in order may 
rest assured that it will be well with him. One humble part has 
hem, we are told, acted zealously — that part is mine. Is it true that 
I have been diligent in laying bare these iniquities ? Give me a 
certificate of my zeal, that I may leave it as a legacy to my children; 
and bid them say of me, " He did his utmost to gibbet at the cross- 
roads of public justice all those who, when war had drenched the 
land 7vith blood and covered it with mourning, parted the garment of 
their country among them, and cast lots upon the vesture of the Cov- 
er time nt, even while they held positions of emolument atid trust." 

Two months after the close of the trial the find- 
ings of the court-martial were published at Wash- 
ington. They were as follows : 

* * * And the court does therefore sentence him, Major Had- 
dock, Twelfth Veteran Reserve Corps, and Acting Assistant Pro- 
vost-Marshal General, Western Division of New York, " To be 
cashiered, and utterly disabled to have or hold any office or employment 
in the service of the United States; that he pay a fine of ten thou- 
sand dollars to the United States, and be imprisoned at such place as 
the proper authority juay designate tin til the said fine is paid — the 
period of said imprisonment not, however, to exceed five years; and 
in conformity with the Eighty-fifth Article of War, the court add 
in and to the said sentence that the crime, name and place of abode 

of the said Major Haddock, to wit, the town of , in the State 

of New York, and punishment of the said delinquent, bp published 
in the newspapers of the said State of New York, from which 
particular State the said offender came, and where he usually resides." 

II. The proceedings, findings and sentence of the court in 
the foregoing case of Major Uaddock, Twelfth Regiment Veteran 
Reserve Corps, are approved and will be duly executed. The 



244 LIP^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

State Prison at Concord, New Hampshire, is designated as the 
place of confinement, where the prisoner will be sent, in charge 
of a suitable guard, under the orders of the Commanding Gen- 
eral, Department of the East, for the execution of so much of his 
sentence as imposes confinement. 

By order of the Secretary of War, 

E. D. TOWNSEND, 

Assistant Adjutant-General. 

The Judge-Advocate General expressed great 
surprise at the leniency of the sentence, and the 
president of the court, General J. C. Robinson, 
said: 

" The war has ended successfully and there is 
a general feeling toward pardon throughout the 
Government. I have partaken of that feeling. 
Did the war still co7itinue, Major Haddock's sen- 
tence would have been death." 



I 

/ 



I865-I866. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD. 

/^N June 18, 1865, the 117th New York Volun- 
teers, recruited from Utica and the outlying 
districts of Oneida County, returned from the field. 
Mr. Conkling-, who was temporarily at his home 
in Utica, delivered the address of welcome. 
He spoke as follows: 

Soldiers and fellow-citizens: * * * In the name of the 
people of this city, and of the committee, I assure you that the 
heartiest welcome they can give is offered to you as neighbors 
and as victorious soldiers of the republic. Three years ago fear 
was everywhere. No home was safe; strong men bowed them- 
selves; our Government tottered; our flag was derided and dis- 
honored on land and on sea, and foreign nations were casting lots 
for our vesture. Then it was, at the country's call, that you left 
fireside and home for the camp, the trench and the hospital — 
then it was that you went out to defend on far distant battle-fields 
the life and glory of your country. You have done your whole 
duty. You have made marches more dreadful than battles. You 
have conquered in fights which will be historic forever. You 
have belonged to the most glorious army which ever assembled 
on earth, and of that army you were the first regiment of all to 
plant the glorious ensign of the republic on the battered parapet 
of Fort Fisher. (Cheers.) In all this career of glory, of duty, 
and of daring exploit, a common purpose has inspired you, a 
common hope has led you on. What was it ? Peace, peace with 

=43 



246 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the Government and the Constitution of our fathers estab- 
lished, has been the object of the war, and the prayer of every 
patriot and of every soldier. We have all longed for the time 
when you who are fathers and you who are sons, you who are 
husbands and you who are brothers, and you who are lovers, 
should return once more to gladden the places which have been 
lonesome and desolate without you. That time, at last, has come, 
and on this burning Sabbath day have gone up, and on every Sab- 
bath will go up, from the Christian altars of the land praises and 
thanksgivings that at last the red eye of battle is closed, and 
prayers that it never again may open, and above all, that it may 
never open on the dis-United States of America. This glorious 
advent of peace comes of the services rendered by you, and by 
your comrades in arms; and you deserve to be decorated with 
heroic honors for conspicuous bravery on burning battle-fields, 
where all were brave. You deserve, as you receive, the gratitude 
of your neighbors, the thanks, the blessings and the benedictions 
of the good, the generous and the true. But I will not detain 
you. It is the Sabbath day, when, even if you were not weary 
with travel, rest and quiet would be congenial to you, and to those 
who have come to greet you. 

Kind hands have provided such tributes of hospitality and 
thoughtfulness as the notice of your coming has allowed; and 
now, in the name of this vast multitude, in the name of the whole 
people of Utica, in the name of the whole people of Oneida 
County, I assure you once more that a welcome and a God- 
bless-you is in the hearts, if not on the lips, of all, the young and 
the old. 

In reply to an invitation to attend a reception 
to be given to the " Conkling Rifles," the follow- 
ing letter was written: 

Utica, August 7, 1865. 

My Dear Sir : I have the pleasure to acknowledge your 
note of to-day inviting me to be present at a reception to be given 
on the loth inst. to the officers of the Nmety-seventh Regiment. 

It would give me great satisfaction to join in the occasion you 



THE CONK LING RIFLES. 247 

propose. I hold it a privilege of high honor to be permitted at 
any time to express the feeling of my fellow-citizens and myself 
toward those whose heroism and devotion have been the salvation 
of us all. 

To whatever State or county or regiment they belong, they 
have my warmest wishes and my high regard. 

But more than this is true of the men whom Boonville is about 
to greet. The ofificers and men of the Ninety-seventh must ever 
be regarded by me with especial partiality and pride, both as sol- 
diers and as friends. Having adopted my humble name, and in- 
scribed it on their banners, they bore it to victory through thirty 
battles. Such an honor can never be forgotten, and from the 
patriot who led at first, to the last private on the roll, all the mem- 
bers of the regiment, in their lives or in their graves, will ever be 
held by me in grateful remembrance. 

It is a matter of sincere regret that I cannot be present on 
Thursday, but I must forego the pleasure. 

Continual absence for weeks has postponed matters which can- 
not now be neglected. 

Should it be possible to release myself, I will come, but I 
have no hope of doing so, and beg you to present to the friends 
who will assemble my apology and my best wishes. 

Your friend and fellow-citizen, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Sam'l Johnson, Esq., Chairman, &c. 

The first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress 
began December 4, 1865. There were in this 
House more eminent and able Representatives 
than in any previous Congress. 

Among the New York delegates were Henry J. 
Raymond, John W. Chanler, James Brooks, John 
H. Ketcham, John A. Griswold (who in 1868 be- 
came the Republican candidate for Governor), 
Theodore M. Pomeroy, Giles W. Hotchkiss and 



248 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CO NR' LING. 

Hamilton Ward, who in 1879 was elected At- 
torney-General. Mr. Conkling was generally re- 
garded as the ablest man of the delegation. It 
may be said that' in this Congress he established 
his national reputation as a statesman and as a 
leader in the councils of the Republican party. 

Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, was chosen Speaker, 
and he appointed Mr. Conkling on the Committee 
of Ways and Means. James A. Garfield and 
Rutherford B. Hayes were members of this House. 
The latter took but little part in the proceedings. 
In the afternoon of the opening day Thaddeus 
Stevens offered a concurrent resolution appomting 
a joint committee of fifteen members to inquire 
into the condition of the so-called Confederate 
States, and to report whether they were entitled 
to representation in either House of Congress. It 
was known as the Committee on Reconstruction. 
The resolution was soon passed by a two-thirds 
vote, the Democrats being recorded in the nega- 
tive. 

Roscoe Conkling was one of the Joint Commit- 
tee. It consisted of six Senators and nine repre- 
sentatives in Congress. Several sub-committees 
were formed, Mr. Conkling being appointed on 
that for Virginia, North Carolina and South Caro- 
lina. Here his colleagues were, Jacob M. Howard, 
a Senator from Michigan, and Henry T. Blow, a 



THE PROVOST-MARSHAL GENERAL. 249 

Representative from Missouri. We may state 
that this Congress was distinguished by measures 
which have had an enduring effect upon the 
nation, e. g., the civil rights bill, the tenure of 
office law, and the fourteenth amendment to the 
Constitution. 

Mr. Conkling submitted, December 5, the fol- 
lowing resolution : 

Resolved, That the Committee on Military Affairs be instructed 
to inquire whether the office of Provost-Marshal General and 
offices subordinate thereto cannot now advantageously be dis- 
pensed with, and such business as remains at that bureau be 
turned over to some necessary and permanent bureau of the War 
Department. 

He demanded the previous question and it was 
adopted without opposition. 

The reader will recognize that this measure was 
suggested by the Haddock court-martial. 

Mr. Conklmg submitted, December 21, the fol^ 
lowing resolution : 

Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested, 
if not incompatible with the public interest, to communicate to this 
House any reporter reports made by the Judge- Advocate General, 
or any other officer of the Government, as to the grounds, facts 
and accusations upon which Jefferson Davis, Clement C. Clay, 
Stephen R. Mallory and David L. Yulee, or either of them, are 
held in confinement. 

He asked for immediate action upon this reso^ 
lution, but, objection being made, it went over 



250 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

under the rules. At a later day (January 10) it 
was adopted. 

On January 15, 1866, he offered the following 
important resolution : 

Resolved, That an amendment of the Constitution of the United 
States should be submitted to the States for their ratification in one 
of the two following forms: 

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several States which may be included within this Union ac- 
cording to their respective numbers, counting the whole number 
of citizens of the United States : Provided, That whenever, in 
any State, civil or political rights or privileges shall be denied or 
abridged on account of race or color, all persons of such race or 
color shall be excluded from the basis of representation. 

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several States which maybe included within this Union accord- 
ing to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of 
citizens of the United States : Provided, That whenever, in any 
State, the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged on ac- 
count of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be 
excluded from the basis of representation. 

It was, without debate, referred to the Commit- 
tee on Reconstruction, and ordered to be printed. 

The next day he submitted the following resolu- 
tion for reference to the same Joint Committee : 

' Resolved, That, in re-establishing the federal relationship of 
the communities lately in rebellion, so as to permit them again to 
participate in administering the general Government, the following 
are necessary and proper requirements on the part of the United 
States, and ought to be secured by such measures as will render 
them, as far as possible, immutable : 

1. The absolute renunciation of all the pretensions and eva- 
sions of secession as a doctrine and as a practice. 

2. The repudiation, both by the State and the national Gov- 



IMPOR TANT RESOL UTJONS. 2 5 1 

ernments, of all public debts and obligations, including State 
and municipal liabilities contracted or assumed in aid of the late 
rebellion, and including also all claims by or on behalf of those 
who were in the military or naval service of the insurgents for 
bounty, pay or pensions, and all claims of persons not loyal to the 
United States for damage or losses suffered by reason of the Re- 
bellion and for advances made in its aid. 

3. The assurance of human rights to all persons within their 
borders, regardless of race, creed or color, and the adoption of 
such provisions against barbarism, disorder and oppression as 
will relieve the general Government from the necessity of stand- 
ing guard over any portion of our country to protect the people 
from domestic violence and outrage. 

4. The impartial distribution of political power among all sec- 
tions of the country so that four million people shall no longer be 
represented in Congress in the interest of sectional aggrandize- 
ment and at the same time be excluded from political privileges 
and rights. 

5. The election of Senators and Representatives in truth loyal 
to the United States, and never ringleaders in the late revolt, nor 
guilty of dastardly betrayals which preceded the war, or of atroci-y 
ties which war cannot extenuate. 

The provisions of this resolution offered an ex- 
cellent basis for the adjustment of any difference 
of views which existed between Congress and the 
President. 

Mr. Conkling would agree to no plan that oper- 
ated to disfranchise the colored population in the 
South ; and it has lately been remarked that the 
greatest reward which he received for aiding in 
their enfranchisement was the practically solid 
vote cast at Chicago in 1880 by negro delegations 
for the nomination of General Grant for President. 



252 LII'E AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

A select committee of nine had been appoint- 
ed on the bankrupt law. Thomas A Jenckes, of 
Rhode Island, was the chairman, and he soon in- 
troduced a bill ; and in February the debate upon 
this measure began. 

It will be remembered that Mr. Conkling- had 
been the chairman of a similar committee in the 
Thirty-seventh Congress ; and he now took a lead- 
ing part in the debate. 

An eminent gentleman who sat in the House 
with him says : 

He never shirked a duty. His attendance at committee meet- 
ing was scrupulously regular and punctual. He studied the bus- 
iness before his committees; and he kept watchful oversight of 
the business of the House when in session. No motion escaped 
him, no proposed amendment passed him unheeded, no reference 
of business was made whose motive and value he did not see. 
He never voted on a measure, in committee or in the House, which 
he did not thoroughly understand, and if he did not understand 
it, he delayed action till he could study his duty. Night sessions 
had no terrors for a man who did not live for pleasure, and who 
was free from every form of loose-living or personal indulgence. 
Continuous sessions of day and night in a deadlock of party 
struggle, or in the last hours of an expiring Congress, saw him 
unwearied at his post, clear-headed and vigilant. 

Stationed in the row of seats fronting the Speaker's desk, he 
was a conspicuous figure in the turmoil and disorder, killing with 
swift use of the rules ill-considered or unwise bills, and remorse- 
lessly throttling the jobs and corrupt measures which had been 
kept back for the opportunities of the last minutes of the confu- 
sion and carelessness. At an early day of his service in the 
House he was accepted as the representative of the courage of 
his party. It was not long before he was accepted as the repre- 



THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION: 



253 



sentative of its integrity; and then came to him the involuntary 
homage which dishonesty pays to honesty, the fear of his resist- 
ance, and combinations to weaken and brealc him down. 

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction re- 
ported, in January 1866, a proposed amendment 
to the Constitution. We print the substance of 
the speech which Mr. Conkling made upon it 
which is entitled the 

BASIS OF REPRESENTATION. 

Mr. Speaker: " Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned 
among the several States which may be included within this Union accord- 
ing to their respective members, which shall be determined by adding to 
the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a 
term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other 
persons." Constitution, Art. i.. Sec. 2. 

This is the provision by which apportionment and representa- 
tion have till now been regulated in the United States. It is one 
of the compromises of the Constitution. Strange as it may seem 
to the gentleman from New Jersey, it owes its existence to the 
same principle asserted in the pending amendment. What is that 
principle ? That political representation does not belong to those 
who have no political existence. 

The Government of a free political society belongs to its mem- 
bers, and does not belong to others. If others are allowed to 
share in its control, they do so by express concession, not by right. 

It was this principle which rendered necessary such a provis- 
ion as I have read. It was this principle which brought that pro- 
vision into our national charter. 

The slaves of the South were not members of that political 
society which formed the Constitution of the United States. 
They were without personal liberty, and therein they were with- 
out a natural right, not a political right; but they were also with- 
out political rights, and therefore they were not members of the 
political community. From this it followed that they were not 
to be represented as members. From this it followed that politi- 



254 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

cal power was not to be apportioned by treating them as political 
persons. 

Natural persons they were, producers they were, and the prod- 
uct of their labor was the proper subject of taxation. But direct 
taxes and representation ought to be distributed uniformly among 
the members of a free Government. All alike should bear the 
burdens; all alike should share the benefits. 

* * * 4fr * * * 

The slave alone was the anomaly and the nondescript, A man 
and not a man. In flesh and blood, alive; politically dead. * * * 
What could be done with him ? He was nowhere. 

******* 

This emancipated multitude has no political status. 

Emancipation vitalizes only natural rights, not political rights. 
— Enfranchisement alone carries with it political rights, and these 
emancipated millions are no more enfranchised now than when 
they were slaves. 

They never had political power. Their masters had a fraction 
of power as masters. But there are no masters now. There are 
no slaves now. The whole relationship in which the power orig- 
inated and existed is gone. Does this fraction of power still sur- 
vive? If it does, what shall become of it? Where is it to go? 

We are told the blacks are unfit to wield even a fraction of 
power, and must not have it. That answers the whole question. 
If the answer be true, it is the end of controversy. There is no 
place logically for this power to go save to the blacks; if they 
are unfit to have it, the power would not exist. It is a power 
astray, without a rightful owner. It should be resumed by the 
whole nation at once. It should not exist; it does not exist. 
This fractional power is extinct. A moral earthquake has turned 
fractions into units, and units into ciphers. If a black man counts 
at all now, he counts as five-fifths of a man, not three-fifths. 
Revolutions have no fractions in their arithmetic; war and 
humanity join hands to blot them out. 

Four million, therefore, and not three-fifths of four million, 
are to be reckoned in here now, and all these four million are, 
and are to be, we are told, unfit for political existence. 

Did the framcrs of the Constitution ever dream of this? Never, 



MODES OF APPORTIONMENT. 



255 



very clearly. Our fathers trusted to gradual and voluntary 
emancipation, which would go hand in hand with education and 
enfranchisement. They never peered into the bloody epoch when 
four million fetters would be at once melted off in the fires of 
war. They never saw such a vision as we see. Four millions, each 
a Caspar Hauser, long shut up in darkness, and suddenly led out 
into the full flash of noon, and each we are told, too blind to walk, 
politically. No one foresaw such an event, and so no provision 
was made for it. 

* -j:- * * * * * 

Here follow two tables giving (first) popula- 
tion, (second) results of different modes of appor- 
tionment. 

From these tables it will be seen that no New England State 
would lose a single Representative either by making white men 
over twenty-one, or all men over twenty-one, the basis of apportion- 
ment. On the contrary, taking white men over twenty-one as the 
basis, Massachusetts would gain two, and Connecticut and Maine, 
one each. New York would gain four. The losses would not 
be in the East. Upon a basis of male voters, black and white, 
Ohio and Illinois would lose one representative each, and Penn- 
sylvania two. California, almost alone of the States heretofore 
free, would gain. Her extraordinary abundance of male popula- 
tion would double her representation. It is now three; it would 
be six. 

The argument, based on differences between the old States and 
the new, in respect of age and sex, in population, is overcome by 
the fact that although these inequalities are large the ratio of rep- 
resentation is larger; that is to say, that the whole number of 
representatives being only 241, it takes so many "persons" or 
"voters" to make up the required constituency for a single one, 
that the preponderance of men over women, except in California, 
is too small in any State seriously to affect the result. 

******* 

It has been said, in aid of a voting basis, that many of the 
abuses to which it would be liable could be prevented by restrict- 
ing the remuneration to male citizens of the United States twenty- 



256 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

one years old and upward. This would prevent much abuse; but 
it would shut out four-fifths of the citizens of the country — women 
and children, who are citizens, who are taxed, and who are, and 
always have been, represented. It would also narrow the basis of 
taxation, and in some States seriously. 

The second plan mentioned, the proposition to prohibit States 
from denying civil or political rights to any class of persons, en- 
counters a great objection on the threshold. It trenches upon 
the principle of existing local sovereignty. It denies to the peo- 
ple of the several States the right to regulate their own affairs in 
their own way. It takes away a right which has been always sup- 
posed to inhere in the States, and transfers it to the general Gov- 
ernment. It meddles with a right reserved to the States when 
the Constitution was adopted, and to which they will long cling 
before they surrender it. No matter whether the innovation be 
attempted in behalf of the negro race or any other race, it is con- 
fronted by the genius of our institutions. But, more than this, 
the Northern States, most of them, do not permit negroes to vote. 
Some of them have repeatedly, and lately, pronounced against it. 
Therefore, even if it were defensible as a principle for the general 
Government to absorb by amendment the power to control the 
action of the States in such a matter, would it not be futile to ask 
three-quarters of the States to do for themselves and all others, 
by ratifying such an amendment, the very thing which most of 
them have already refused to do in their own cases? This step 
will be taken, if taken at all, as a last resort in the attainment of 
some object too wise and desirable to be opposed. 

The third proposition is believed by the Committee to avoid, as 
far as the case admits of, all the objections of the other two. 
Let me read it as it will stand in the Constitution if adopted by 
Congress and three-quarters of the States: 

" Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the 
several States which shall be included in the Union according to their 
respective numbers, which shall be determined by counting the whole 
number of persons in each State. Provided, that whenever the elective 
franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State, on account of race or 
color, all individuals of such race or color shall be excluded from the 
basis of representation." 



THE COLORED RACE IS FIT TO VOTE. 2^ J 

It contains but one condition, and that rests upon a principle 
already embedded in the Constitution, and as old as free govern- 
ment itself. That principle I afifirmed in the beginning, namely, 
that representation does not belong to those who have not politi- 
cal existence, but to those that have. The object of the amend- 
ment is to enforce this truth. 

It therefore provides that whenever any State finds within its 
borders a race of beings unfit for political existence, that race 
shall not be represented in the federal Government. Every 
State will be left free to extend or withhold the elective franchise 
on such terms as it pleases, and this without losing anything in 
representation, if the terms are impartial as to all. Qualifications 
of voters may be required of any kind— qualifications of intelli- 
gence, of property, or of any sort whatever, and yet no loss of repre- 
sentation shall thereby be suffered. But whenever, in any State, 
and so long as a race can be found which is so low, so bad, so 
ignorant, so stupid, that it is deemed necessary to exclude men 
from the right to vote merely because they belong to that race, 
in such case the race shall likewise be excluded from the sum of 
federal power to which that State is entitled. 

If a race is so vile or worthless that to belong to it is alone 
cause of exclusion from political action, the race is not to be 
counted here in Congress. 



* 



^ * * * * * 



To return to my argument: the pending proposition commends 
itself, it is thought, for many reasons. 

First. It provides for representation co-extensive with taxa- 
tion. I say it provides for this; it does not certainly secure it, 
but it enables every State to secure it. It does not, therefore, as 
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Rogers) insists, violate the 
rule^hat representation should go with taxation. If a race in 
any State is kept unfit to vote, and fit only to drudge, the wealth 
created by its work ought not to be taxed. Those who profit by 
such a system, or such a condition of things, ought to be taxed 
for it. Let them build churches and school houses, and found 
newspapers, as New York and other States have done, and edu- 
cate their people until they are fit to vote. " Fair play," "A fair 
day's wages for a fair day's work," " Live and let live "—these 
17 



258 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

mottoes, if blazoned over the institutions of a State, will insure it 
against being cursed for any length of time with inhabitants so 
worthless that they are fit only for beasts of burden. I have said 
that the amendment provides for representation going hand in 
hand with taxation. That is its first feature. 

Second. It brings into the basis both sexes and all ages, and 
so it counteracts and avoids, as far as possible, the casual and 
geographical inequalities of the population. 

Third. It puts every State on an equal footing in the re- 
quirement prescribed. 

Fourth. It leaves every State unfettered to enumerate all its 
people for representation or not, just as it pleases. 

Thus every State has the sole control, free from all interfer- 
ence, of its own interests and concerns. 

No other State, nor the general Government, can molest the 
people of any State on the subject, or even inquire into their acts 
or their reasons, but all the States have equal rights. 

If New York chooses to count her black population as politi- 
cal persons she can do so. If she does not choose to do so the 
matter is her own, and her right cannot be challenged. So of 
South Carolina. But South Carolina shall not say, "True, we 
have less than three hundred thousand ' persons ' in this State, 
politically speaking, yet we have in governing the country the 
power of seven hundred thousand persons." 

The amendment is common to all States, and equal for all; 
its operation will of course be, practically, only in the South. 

No Northern State will lose by it, whether the Southern States 
extend suffrage to blacks or not. Even New York, in her great 
population, has so few blacks that she could exclude them all 
from enumeration and it would make no difference in her repre- 
sentation. 

******* 

It has been insisted that "citizens of the United States," and 
not "persons," should be the basis of representation and appor- 
tionment. 

These words were in the pending amendment as I originally 
drew it and introduced it, but my own judgment was that it 
should be "persons," and to this the Committee assented. 



THE FREED MEN'S BUREAU. 



259 



There are several answers to the argument in favor of " citi- 
zens" rather than "persons." 

The present Constitution is, and always was, opposed to this 
suggestion. "Persons," and not "citizens," have always con- 
stituted the basis. 

Again, it would narrow the basis of taxation and cause con- 
siderable inequalities in this respect, because the number of aliens 
in some States is very large, and growing larger now when emi- 
grants reach our shores at the rate of more than a State a year. 

* -Sf * * * * -Sf 

I believe it a wise and salutary provision, a solid block, needed 
in the foundation of our structure for the sake of the white man 
and the black. Those who lend a helping hand to put it in its 
place will, I think, deserve well of their country. He who does 
most toward incorporating it in the Constitution may hope to be 
heir to the praise, once not well bestowed: *' Urbem lateritiam in- 
venit, marmoriam reliquit." 

The first breach between the President and 
Congress was February 19, when the Freed men's 
Bureau bill was vetoed. Mr. Conklinof voted for it. 

Mr. Conkling- presented, February 26, a petition 
signed by Lieutenant-General Grant, Major-Gen- 
eral Howard and others, to the effect that the act 
of March 3, 1863, may be so amended "as to per- 
mit soldiers' memorials to pass through the mails 
upon the payment of usual postage on printed 
matter." 

In March, 1866, in his remarks upon the " Loan 
Bill," he said: 

* * * Gold and silver are the measures and standards of 
value: the honest standards, the world's standards, the real stand- 
ards. Why ? Because they are money. * * * Coin is the 



26o LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

true standard of value in the commercial world because it repre- 
sents the cost of production. That is the difference between a 
metallic and a paper currency. Its value is not alone in its being 
stamped or called " money." 

*' The rank is but the guinea's stamp." 

A silver dollar or a gold eagle represents the cost of produc- 
ing it, with a trifling difference, perhaps, arising from the expense 
of coinage, and the alloy which hardens it against attrition and 
keeps it out of the crucibles of other nations. What does paper 
represent ? If redeemable in coin, it represents the metallic value 
behind it; if irredeemable, it represents nothing in itself; it simply 
is evidence of a promise to pay. 

******* 

I was here when the " legal-tender " policy was launched. I 
remember the contest well. The financial question was then, 
even more than now, the overmastering public question. It was 
the only rock on which we could split, and we all examined our- 
selves to see we made no blunder which consideration could avoid. 

I gave my vote and voice agamst taking the first step toward 
driving coin from circulation. I believed then, as I believe now, 
that the hour had not yet come when it was impossible longer to 
postpone suspension. * * * Therefore I resisted the first 
motion to suspend specie payments, and I say to the gentleman 
that those who stood then for the old and approved ways will be 
able to stand now, and to go as far and as fast as sound discre- 
tion will permit in the path which leads to frugality and solvency.* 

* * * Opposed as I was to the experiment of paper being 
resorted to at the time, dreading as I did, more than I ever 
dreaded any final result threatened by the war, the effect of a 
paper policy, I admit and assert that we have escaped, as we had 
no right to expect, the consequences and disasters of the measure. 
******* 

The subject of this memoir, on the following 
day, favored a bill providing that " no exemption 
from liability to State or municipal taxation shall, 

* vide speech on " The Public Credit " in Chapter X. 



THE REORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY. 26 1 

by virtue of any act of Congress, be held to ex? 
tend to money on hand." 

The President returned, without his approval, 
March 27, the famous civil rights bill ; and about 
two weeks afterward Mr. Conkling voted with 121 
others to pass this measure over the veto."^ 

In the month of April, General Schenck called 
up for consideration a bill for the reorganization 
of the army, which had been reported by the 
Committee on Military Affairs, of which he was 
chairman. 

Pending the discussion, Mr. Conkling moved to 
strike out the twentieth section, which made pro- 
vision for the bureau of the Provost - Marshal 
General as a permanent bureau in the Department 
of War. General Grant, then Lieutenant-General 
of the Army, in a letter under date of March 19, 
1866, had given an opinion that there were too 
many bureaus in the War Department, and that 
the office of Provost-Marshal General was un- 
necessary. 

In the debate upon the motion to amend the 
bill, Mr. Conkling used these words : " My objec- 
tion to this section is that it creates an unnecessary 
office for an undeserving public servant; it fastens, 

* The titles of the bills which he voted to pass over the veto of Mr. John- 
son are here given : " Reconstruction," " Tenure of Office," " Insurrection- 
ary State," " Elective Franchise for the District of Columbia," the " Civil 
Rights" and the " Freedmen's Bureau " acts. 



262 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

as an incubus upon the country, a hateful instru- 
ment of war, which deserves no place in a free 
government in a time of peace." 

James 13. Fry, of Illinois, was then Provost-Mar- 
shal General, and on the thirtieth day of April 
a letter written by him to a member of the House, 
and bearing date the twenty-seventh day of that 
month, was read from the desk of the clerk of the 
House. 

That letter, in addition to many general and in- 
direct statements of wrong-doing, contained four 
specific charges against Mr. Conkling : 

First : That he had received improperly, if not illegally, the 
sum of three thousand dollars for his services as judge-advo- 
cate in the trial of Major Haddock, and for his further services 
in the prosecution of a class of deserters known as bounty 
jumpers. 

Second : That in the discharge of his duties he had not acted 
in good faith in that he "was as zealous in preventing prosecu- 
tions at Utica as he was in making them at Elmira." 

Third : That he "made a case for himself by telegraphing to 
the War Department that the Provost-Marshal of his district re- 
quired legal advice, and that thereupon Charles A. Dana, then 
Assistant Secretary of War, had Mr. Conkling appointed to in- 
vestigate all frauds in enlistments in Western New York, with the 
stipulation that he should be commissioned judge-advocate for 
the prosecution of any case brought to trial." 

Fourth : Finally he said of Mr. Conkling: *' He can therefore 
only escape the charge of deliberate and malignant falsehood as a 
member of Congress by confessing an unpardonable breach of 
duty as judge-advocate." 

The letter and charges were referred to a com- 



AN INVESTIGATION TAKES PLACE. 263 

mittee composed of members of both political 
parties. 

Witnesses were examined, arguments of coun- 
sel were heard, a thorough examination of the 
statutes was made, and at the end the Committee, 
with entire unanimity, submitted a report which 
was adopted by the House. 

The concluding paragraphs of the report are in 
these words : 

Your committee, having fully and carefully considered the 
charges against Hon. Roscoe Conkling contained in the letter of 
General Fry, are unanimously of opinion that none of the charges 
in the letter, whether made directly and openly or indirectly and 
covertly, have any foundation in truth, and that the conduct of 
Mr. Conkling in relation to each of the matters investigated by 
the committee has been above reproach, and that no circum- 
stances sufficient to excite reasonable suspicion have arisen which 
could justify or excuse the attack made upon him in the letter of 
General Fry, 

The several charges against the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, con- 
tained in the letter of General Fry, being unsupported by the testi- 
mony in any one material particular, although ample opportunity 
was afforded, at the cost of much time and expense, to enable the 
writer of that letter to furnish his proofs, the committee ought not 
to refrain from the expression of their condemnation of the de- 
liberate act of a public functionary in traducing the official as well 
as the personal character of a member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States by the publication of a libel which 
he was so illy prepared to sustain. Indignities offered to the 
character or proceedings of the national legislature by libellous 
assaults have been resented and punished both in England and 
the United States as breaches of privilege ; and such assaults 
upon the official character of members have been held punishable 
as indignities committed against the House itself. The reason 



264 Z/i^^ AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

for this rests upon the same ground as that which justifies the ex- 
ercise of similar authority to punish for attempts by personal vio- 
lence, menaces or bribes to influence the conduct of members in 
their official capacity. 

Your committee deem it proper most earnestly to protest 
against the practice, which has obtained to some extent, of causing 
letters from persons not members of the House to be read as a 
part of a personal explanation, in which the motives of members 
are criticised, their conduct censured, and they are called to an- 
swer for words spoken in debate. Such attacks upon members, 
made in the House itself, and published in its proceedings, and 
scattered broadcast to the world at the expense of the Govern- 
ment, are, in the opinion of your committee, an improper check 
upon the freedom of debate, a violation of the privileges, and an 
infraction of the dignity of the House. 

Your committee submit for the consideration of the House 
the following resolutions, and recommend their adoption : 

Resolved, That all the statements contained in the letter of 
General James B. Fry to Hon. James G. Blaine, a member of this 
House, bearing date the 27th of April, A. D. 1866, and which 
was read in this House on the 30th of April, A. D. 1866, in so far 
as such statements impute to the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, a mem- 
ber of this House, any criminal, illegal, unpatriotic, or otherwise 
improper conduct or motives, either as to the matter of his pro- 
curing himself to be employed by the Government of the United 
Stalfes in the prosecution of military offences in the State of New 
York, in the management of such prosecutions, in taking compen- 
sation therefor, or in any other charge, are wholly without founda- 
tion truth ; and for their publication there were, in the judgment 
of this House, no facts connected with said prosecutions furnish- 
ing either a palliation or an excuse. 

Resolved, That General Fry, an officer of the Government of 
the United States and head of one of its military bureaus, in writ- 
ing and publishing these accusations named in the preceding reso- 
lution, and which, owing to the crimes and wrongs which they im- 
pute to a member of this body, are of a nature deeply injurious to 
the official and personal character, influence and privileges of 
such member, and their publication originating, as in the judg- 



A SEVERE DENUNCIATION'. 



265 



merit of the House they did, in no misapprehensmi of facts, but 
in the resentment and passion of their author, was guilty of a 
gross violation of the privileges of such member and of this 
House, and his conduct in that regard merits and receives its un- 
qualified disapprobation. 

S. Shellabarger, Chairman. 

W. WlNDOM. 
B. M. BOYER. 

B. C. Cook. 
Samuel L. Warner. 

When the bill to repeal the tax on oil was be- 
fore the House the subject of this biography both 
spoke and voted in its favor ; and he has since 
been kindly remembered in the oil regions of 
Pennsylvania. 

On June 13, 1866, the fourteenth constitutional 
amendment, consisting of five sections, passed the 
House, Mr. Conkling voting in the affirmative. It 
defined national citizenship for the first time and 
established its rights and privileges. 

Three days later the President disapproved of 
it; but it was soon submitted to the several States. 
In the following January this amendment was 
ratified by New York; and the ratification was an- 
nounced by the Secretary of State July 28, 1868.* 

*Mr. Conkling was disappointed by the narrowness of the scope given 
to the fourteenth amendment by the decision of the Supreme Court of the 
United States in the Civil Rights cases in the year 1883. The writer hap- 
pens to know that he wrote to Mr. Justice Harlan, congratulating him on 
his dissenting opinion, and he takes the liberty of publishing the sub- 
stance of his letter. He said: 

" It is naked truth to say that it was read, not only with admiration, 



266 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

On June i8 Mr. Fessenden in the Senate, and 
Mr. Stevens in the House, submitted the majority 
report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. 
It was a long document signed by twelve mem- 
bers, including Roscoe Conkling, Thaddeus Ste- 
vens, Elihu B. Washburne, George S. Boutwell and 
Justin S. Morrill. 

Four days afterward a minority report was pre- 
sented by Reverdy Johnson, A. J. Rogers and 
Henry Grider. 

In July, 1866, the bill to preserve the neutral re- 
lations of the United States being under consid- 
eration, Mr. Conkling said : 

* * * My colleague, who says everything well, remarked 
that our neutrality laws have commanded the respect of other 
nations. * * * Sir, there was a time when we might be the 
objects of this respect, the recipients of this approbation, if not 
with satisfaction, at least with indifference. That was in the time 
when we were in the midst of undisturbed prosperity. It was 
* * * in discharging our obligations of neutrality as in- 
scribed upon our statute-book, giving to them a broad and gen- 
erous interpretation. But there came another time. There came 
a dark and portentous hour — an hour when we were no longer 

but with surprise at its strength of position. For many reasons I would 
you had never been summoned to the task of writing it. That the decis- 
ion from which it dissents will stir potent and enduring forces I expect; 
and that what you have so clearly said will be widely accepted and adopted 
as truth, seen not only, but seen with the foresight of wisdom — I do not 
doubt. Several occurrences have already paved the way to a fresh con- 
sideration of the field covered by the discussion, and others are pretty sure 
to follow. Narrow as my outlook now is, I content myself with congratu- 
lating you on an opinion which cannot fail to add to your fame as a jurist 
and as a statesman." 



THE ADMISSION OF SENA TOR PA TTERSON. 267 

prosperous, but when we were in time of trouble— in the throes 
of disturbing revolution. Then we were, as we had a right to 
suppose, to receive a just return for the hard faith we had so 
sacredly kept. Did we receive a just return ? Did we receive 
any return which a proud and powerful people can brook? 
.3^ ***** * 

Look at the last four years. Begin with the Trent affair. Re- 
member our harmless merchantmen burned at midnight in mid- 
ocean. Consider the Canadian raid upon Vermont and its issue. 
Recall the building of rams, and the fitting out of pirates; and 
then the laggard and shambling efforts to arrest them. Do not 
forget the recent incursion upon Canada, nor the rigorous fidelity 
with which the Government punished that incursion. Bear in 
mind the approbation with which that rigor was received in Eng- 
land, the gracious praise of the "Thunderer" of Fleet Street, 
and from which shall we derive consolation ? * * * 

Mr. Conkling made, July 27, a stirring speech in 
the House concerning the admission of David T. 
Patterson (a Circuit Judge during the war) as 
a Senator from Tennessee. He closed the de- 
bate, and finally moved to lay on the table the 
joint resolution of the Senate and House. 

The joint resolution read as follows: 

Be it resolved, &-€., That Hon. David T. Patterson, a Senator- 
elect from the State of Tennessee, be admitted to his seat upon 
taking the usual oath to support the Constitution of the United 
States, and upon taking so much of the oath prescribed by the 
act entitled " An act to prescribe an oath of office, and for other 
purposes," approved July 2, 1862, as is not included in the fol- 
lowing words, to wit: "That I have neither sought nor accepted, 
nor attempted to exercise, the functions of any office whatever, 
under any authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the 
United States." 



268 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

This resolution was, upon motion of Mr. Conk- 
ling, laid on the table by a vote of eighty-eight to 
thirty-one. 

Whoever reviews the Reconstruction period will 
see Mr. Conkling,with unfailing diligence and en- 
ergy, when work was to be done, always present. 
He devoted his abilities enthusiastically to the re- 
establishment of order, and the enactment of just 
laws that should bear equally upon the weak and 
the strong, the rich and the poor,. the proud and 
the humble. 



V 



tL 



1866. 

CHAPTER XV. 

HIS LAST CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN, 

" I "HE Union County Convention met at Rome, 
September 8, 1866. The meeting was called 
to order by Charles M. Dennison, of Rome, and 
on motion the Hon. Richard Hulbert, of Boonville, 
became the chairman. 

After the customary routine business, the Con- 
vention took a recess and assembled later in the 
day, with the Hon. Alrick Hubbell, of Utica, as 
president, and Lewis Lawrence, of the same city, 
as the first vice-president. 

James Rockwell, of Utica, moved the nomina- 
tion of the Hon. Roscoe Conkling for representa- 
tive in Congress and that the result be determined 
by a rising vote. 

The motion was unanimously carried, every 
delegate rising to his feet. 

Mr. Conkling was conducted to the platform, 
and spoke substantially as follows: 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Co7ive?ition : I return you 
my thanks for this generous and cordial greeting, and for the re- 
newed mark of confidence it has been your pleasure to bestow. In 

269 



270 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

accepting the trust of representing, yet longer, the constituency 
for which you speak to-day, I can only assure you that in the 
future, as in the past, the wishes and the interests of the district 
shall be the guiding star of my actions, and that within the limits 
of my ability I will defend its honor against all comers. 

******* 

The great and glorious party you represent, having stood by 
the country in its darkest hours, and borne it in triumph through 
the most trying of human struggles, has still a mission unper- 
formed. * * * The will of the majority, lawfully expressed, 
must be the only king; the ballot-box must be the only throne, 
and before that every knee must bow. The President of the 
United States (Andrew Johnson), as he goes on his deceitful er- 
rand, with an imperial condescension, a supercilious patronage, 
which seem to ape Louis Napoleon, repeats from place to place, 
" I shall place the Constitution in the hands of the people." 

This angry man, dizzy with the elevation to which assassina- 
tion has raised him, frenzied with power and ambition, does not 
seem to know that not he, but the men who made the Constitu- 
tion placed it in the people's hands. They placed Andrew Johnson 
in the people's hands also; and when those hands shall drop their 
votes into the ballot-box, Andrew Johnson and his policy of arro- 
gance and usurpation will be snapped like a willow wand. * * * 
Do not doubt, my friends, that Oneida County will bear herself 
justly and proudly in the work. Her people are not for sale; 
they can neither be brow-beaten nor bought. * * * With a 
just regard for the rights of all sections, they will see to it that 
the Union and the rights of the people are so anchored as, in the 
language of one of the resolutions, to make fast the blessings of 
liberty, prosperity and peace. 

Mr. Conkling's views on Reconstruction are well 
expressed in his speech at Mechanics' Hall, Utica, 
September 13, 1866. It was afterward printed in 
pamphlet form and would cover forty pages of 
this memoir; we have space for but one-fifth of it. 



THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF 1866. 



271 



It is entitled "Congress and, the President; the 
Pohtical Problem of 1866." 

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: 

In so far as this greeting implies personal regard for me, it 
only adds another to the many occasions scattered through twenty 
years, for which my gratitude is due to the people of this city 
and county. 

* * ^ * * * -jf 

You believe your country is at stake now. So do I; and there- 
fore we assemble under the institutions which our fathers made, 
and which give us, as the remedy for wrongs in government, the 
silent, potent vote, and enjoin upon us the duty to use it wisely, 

* * * * -x- * * 

Concerning the debate on the report of the Re- 
construction Committee, he said : 

We examined hundreds of witnesses, pushing the sittings into 
the night. We called witnesses of every shade of opinion, refus-^ 
ing none that anybody wanted heard. Rebel and loyalist, civil- 
ian and soldier, officer and private, were all sought after, and 
members of the Committee, of opposite politics, were present to 
examine and cross-examine. This testimony is pregnant through- 
out, and no man is warranted in calling names, or assuming to 
know more of this question than other people, unless he has read 
what the witnesses swore to. 

Here it is; it fills 814 pages of type too fine for an old man to 
read. Besides this, there are two hundred and sixty pages of 
documentary evidence. 

How many, think you, have read it, of these gentlemen who 
have suddenly started up to take charge of the business of Recon- 
struction ? 

How many of them have taken the trouble to read a page of 
it, or to study the question at all in its various bearings, before 
undertaking to pronounce upon one of the greatest and most 
difficult problems in history ? But then, after all, what are vol- 
umes of testimony, what are months of labor, compared to going 



272 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

to Philadelphia* and seeing a man from Massachusetts and a 
man from South Carolina walk into a convention arm in arm ? 

Who wants to fool away his time in investigating, after he has 
been to Philadelphia and heard Lee and Stonewall Jackson 
cheered, and the loyal people of the North lectured and de- 
nounced by rebels, in reply to serenades where Dixie was 
played ? 

Who wants to bother with dry facts, after he has imbibed in- 
spiration from James L. Orr, a traitor to his country, a ringleader 
in rebellion, a man tattooed with broken oaths, and afterward a 
Senator in the Rebel Congress ? 

You and I, however, not having enjoyed these peculiar advan- 
tages, want to get at the facts in the old-fashioned way, just as we 
would go at any matter of business. Let us see, then, what the 
proof does establish. 

It shows that the unseemly clamor of Southern rebels for im- 
mediate representation has certain objects. 

Fi7-st — To enable those who plunged the Southern States into 
secession to resume their old sway in the Government. 

Second — To obtain pay for emancipated slaves. 

Third — To make the nation pay for damages done by the war. 

Fourth — To compel the United States to assume the rebel 
debt. 

Fifth — If the rebel debt is not assumed, to repudiate the Union 
debt. 

It shows that when the last of the Rebellion was beaten down, 
the insurgents would have accepted anything, but that, under the 
patronage of the President, everything is reversed. 

It shows that lawlessness, disloyalty and contempt abound in 
the South, and that too where there was nothing of the sort until 
incited and emboldened by the course of the President, 

It shows that by pardons, and by favoritism of other kinds, 
rebels have been lifted up, and loyal men have been put down, 
until treason is more fashionable and Unionism is more odious 
than it was during the war, and life and property, and the most 
sacred rights, are the sport of license and brutality. 

*The speaker refers to the so-called National Convention which met at 
Philadelphia, August 14, 1S66. 



THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION. 273 

It shows secret organizations existing and increasing, having 
for their object hostility to the Government of the United States, 
and that in case of a foreign war the rebels would take sides 
against us. 

Men who went to Philadelphia and danced before the king 
were called as witnesses, and on their oaths confessed convictions 
and views utterly destructive of the peace and existence of the 
United States. 

In short the examination revealed a state of things which en- 
tirely prepared us for such atrocities as have since become noto 
rious. 

It prepared us to find that nowhere in the South was the 
Fourth of July celebrated except by negroes. It prevented our 
being much surprised when women and children were shot down 
for strewing flowers upon soldiers' graves. This happened in 
South Carolina, and James L. Orr says South Carolina is per- 
fectly loyal; but then these women and children were black, and 
the tenants of those graves, though white, died for the Union, 
and they had no epitaph except the word " Unhwwny 

Alabama, too, so bewitching at Philadelphia, we were prepared 
to find, has not to-day a single loyal newspaper published in the 
State. 

Memphis, with its tale of horror and of shame, gave no more 
surprise to those who had been through the Reconstruction inves- 
tigation than did the fact that Forrest, the murderer and butcher 
of Fort Pillow, presided the other day in Memphis at a meeting 
to ratify the Philadelphia Convention. 

Even New Orleans, with its masquerade of tyranny and car- 
nage, surprised us not so much by the scenes that were enacted 
as by the fact that an American President should be found ap- 
parently falsifying despatches, in order to cover up his purpose to 
subvert free government in Louisiana and rear upon its ruins a 
despotism tempered by assassination. 

Texas we were prepared to find, by this time, as Texas is, one 
vast arena of treason, violence and wrong. 

Union men throughout the South — not black men only, but 
white men — fleeing northward for their lives, even a United States 
Senator-elect compelled to leave his State to escape murder, and 
18 



2 74 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the rebels raised from supplicants to dictators. These are only 
such things as we reported would occur. 

We found, therefore, that nothing could be more unnecessary, 
more unsafe, more mad, than to introduce such elements into 
the Government without first securing such safeguards as could 
be properly devised. 

Mr. Conkling next discussed this proposition: 
Shall one rebel at the South have as much power 
as three white men at the North ? 

We found, moreover, that the downfall of slavery had rendered 
senseless and inoperative the provision of the Constitution appor- 
tioning representation. We found that four million negroes 
suddenly changed from slaves to freemen would, unless the Con- 
stitution was amended, give the Southern States hereafter twenty- 
four representatives in Congress and in the Electoral College, 
two-thirds of which would otherwise go to the North, making a 
difference of more than twenty-four in the result. 

The Constitution as it stands, made when slavery existed, 
bases representation upon free persons, and upon " three-fifths of 
all others." Noiv there are no "others" than free persons, and 
hence the States that had slavery propose, in fixing their share of 
power in the Government, for the future to count every negro 
not as three-fifths of a man, but as a full man, and they say they 
shall vote for the negro, he being unfit to vote for himself. 

By this management they will add two-fifths to the former 
voting power of the black race, and use that power to govern you 
and me. In New York 130,000 white people have but one repre- 
sentative in Congress, but one vote and one voice; but in South 
Carolina 130,000 whites will have three Representatives, three 
votes and three voices in Congress, if they are to be allowed to 
count in their blacks. Is this fair? Is it to be tolerated? Is a 
white man in Charleston as good as three white men in Utica ? 
Are men, as the reward and result of rebellion, to be erected into 
a ruling political aristocracy ? 

We hear a great deal about a white man's government. What 



THE NEXT APPORTIONMENT. 275 

sort of a white man's government would that be in which politi- 
cal equality between white men is impossible ? 

Waiving the principle and the right of the thing, look at the re- 
sult. 

The whole number of members of the House of Representa- 
tives is 242. If the old slave States are to be allowed to count 
their non-voting blacks, the next apportionment will give them 
ninety-four or ninety-six members. This lacks but twenty-six or 
twenty-eight of being a majority of all. In other words, twenty- 
six or twenty-eight votes from the North added to the Southern 
vote give them the House. Did you ever know the time when 
they couldn't get twenty-six votes from the North for anythmg 
they couldn't carry without ? 

The last Congressional election swept the North like a tornado. 
We had had, two years before, something such a pretended 
" Conservative " movement as is being palmed off now ; it wasn't 
so barefaced as this, and being the first time, it carried before the 
people found it out ; it came within an ace of losing us the Gov- 
ernment and the war, and it re-acted two years afterward, so 
that true Northern sentiment in the House of Representatives was 
stronger at the last session than it ever had been before, and yet 
forty "or forty-one men were there to vote for the extremest South- 
ern views. 

When a report was made against paying for damages done by 
the war in Southern States, every Democrat but six, I am sorry to 
say, voted against it. 

When a bill was passed to restore to Union men at the South 
the lands confiscated by the rebel Government, every Democrat 
voted against it, and every Union man voted for it. 

Suits have been brought in the South against Union ofificers 
for property injured or destroyed in the war. Thirty-five hundred 
of these suits have been commenced in Kentucky alone. We 
passed a bill to allow these cases to be removed into the United 
States Courts, so as to get them before a more unbiased judge 
and jury, and every Democrat voted against it. 

The orator referred then to the payment of the 
rebel debt. 



276 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Do you want to give up your interests once more to this alli- 
ance, with two-fifths added to the old slave power ? Do you want 
to bind your country hand and foot, and lay it again on the altar 
at which it has been once offered up ? 

What would become of it ? What would become of the pen- 
sion roll of soldiers and their widows and orphans ? 

What would become of the public debt and the public credit ? 
What would greenbacks, and five-twenties, and seven-thirties be 
worth ? 

The rebels who did the sleight-of-hand at Philadelphia said 
they would keep the United States securities good. I think they 
will too, because the Union people of the country are going to fix 
it that they can't make them bad. 

But suppose you let them take control, what will they do ? 

Will they say to the North, You have beaten us in the battle; 
you have desolated our land with fire and sword ; you have stripped 
us; you have annihilated four thousand million dollars by destroy- 
ing slavery ; you have compelled us to repudiate our debt ; you 
have prevented our paying our creditors or soldiers ; we are poor, 
we are naked, but we are going now to keep voting taxes on our- 
selves to pay the debt you made in destroying us ? Will they say 
this ? Is it rational to expect it ? 

Public debts are not repudiated by direct affirmative legisla- 
tion. The want of legislation is enough to turn to blank paper 
every greenback in your pocket, every Government note or bond 
you hold. 

A majority, or even less than a majority, in either House 
of Congress has only to fail to pass a certain ImII, and bank- 
ruptcy, repudiation and ruin would come like an unforetold 
eclipse. 

The rebel debt would not only go up in the market, as it did 
in England after the Philadelphia Convention, but the rebel debt 
and Southern war damages would become a stock to be bought up 
and lobbied through Congress. Men could make hundreds of 
thousands out of a single vote, and the most enormous corruption 
fund ever heard of in any country would be brought to bear upon 
the representatives of the people. 

Are you ready for this ? Are you ready to put up your rights, 



THE RECONSTRUCTION COMMITTEE. 277 

your property and flie honor of the nation to be raffled for by the 
murderers of your children and the betrayers of your country ? 

Are you ready, after staggering through four years of agony, to 
fool away and give away for nothing all you have struggled for the 
moment you have it in your grasp ? 

Congress and the Committee of Fifteen thought not. They 
thought the graves should grow green, that the cripples should have 
time to limp back to their homes, that the inky cloak should begin to 
disappear before the authors of our woes come back into the presence 
of their surviving victims ; and that when they do come, it should 
be upon terms of equality with the rest of us, and with nothing more. 
***** * * 

Just here I want to inquire of my Democratic friends, where 
that darkening cloud of negroes is with which emancipation was 
to cover the North ? Where is that black wave of laborers from 
the South which was to roll in upon us, to crowd out white men 
and reduce their wages ? 

Four years ago mobs were raised, passions were roused, votes 
were given, upon the idea that emancipated negroes were to burst 
in hordes upon the North. We said then, give them liberty and 
rights at the South, and they will stay there and never come into 
a cold climate to die. We say so still, and we want them let 
alone, and that is one thing that this part of the amendment is for. 
With even the chance given them so far, and a hard chance it 
has been, they have done better than we are sometimes told. 

The Reconstruction Committee took testimony on that point 
too, and I wish every one of you would read it. You would see, 
among other things, that more whites than blacks have been fed 
and clothed by the Freedmen's Bureau — in Tennessee, three to 
one ; in Arkansas, for this month of September, the number of 
whites assisted is 35,000 ; of blacks, only 5,000. 

So barefaced has become the pretence that the "Bureau of 
Refugees and Freedmen " has been for the sole benefit of the 
lazy blacks, that the President is taking on his stumping tour a 
wholly different tack. 

Mr. Conkling- concluded by the following al- 
lusions to President Johnson: 



278 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Now " the rich traitor " is courted and caressed, and the poor 
Unionist is butchered by the connivance of Andrew Johnson. 

After Missouri has passed laws to prevent rebels from voting, 
and after the courts have sustained those laws, this frenzied 
usurper dares to tell a deputation of traitors that everything that 
can be done from Washington by military force will be done to 
insure rebels the opportunity to vote in Missouri, the laws of the 
State to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Not satisfied with betraying the country by official action, and 
by secret plotting; not satisfied with conniving at the robbery 
and murder of Unionists, and the exaltation and reward of 
traitors at the South, he comes now to buffet and slander the 
Union people of the North, and to blacken the memory of their 
dead. 

Let the people of the North sanction or submit to it, and 
throughout the South the worst impulse will be given to the pub- 
lic mind, and the worst results for the whole country will follow. 
Already a revolution and a dictatorship loom in the distance. 
But let the elections speak out in favor of the mild and safe ])lan 
of restoration proposed by Congress, and Southern men of all 
classes, seeing the folly of continuing resistance, will accept the 
terms proposed. Then we shall have a Union, not only of States 
and of people, but of interests, of rights and of hearts, and the 
nation will enter upon a career of prosperity untold in history or 
fable.* 

* The following reference to this speech, taken from the Lockport (N. 
Y .') Journal oi April 18, 1888, may interest the reader: 

MR. CONKUNG'S wonderful MEMORY. 

We venture to recall just a fact illustrative of Mr. Conkling's wonder- 
ful memory, which came under the observation of the writer of this ar- 
ticle, who in 1866 was city editor of the Utica Herald. Mr. Conkling 
came home that fall to speak at old Mechanics' Hall upon the exciting 
war and other issues of the hour. The i^t'r^?/^/ naturally desired a full re- 
port the next morning. It was impossible to have it, in those days, with- 
out the copy in advance. This Mr. Conkling furnished the city editor the 
afternoon of the evening he was to speak. That evening he delivered it 
almost word for word as furnished in advance, although the effort to every 
appearance was extempore. It made upward of eleven solid columns of 
the Utica Herald. 



A NEW ERA JN POLITICS. 279 

It is worthy of remark that during his canvass 
Mr Conkling spoke at fourteen different towns. 

A new era in the poUtics of the State was 
dawning. WiUiam H. Seward remained m the 
Cabinet and hence sustained the President's pol- 
icy His friends were neutral or hostile to the new 
order of things. Thurlow Weed had lost control 
of the political destinies of New York. Governor 
Reuben E. Fentonand Senator Edwin D. Morgan 
were not orators nor adapted for leadership. Mr. 
Conkling pulled the laboring oar, exhorted the 
younger class of men then commg forward and 
gave to the campaign an energy and enthusiasm 
which insured success in November. 

In response to an inquiry from a committee of 
workingmen, he wrote the following letter : 

Utica, October 29, 1866. 
Gentlemen: I have just received your note inquiring my 
views respecting the movement to reduce and fix the hours of 
labor which shall constitute a legal day's work 

Expressions of opin.on in the nature of pledges made by can- 
didates for officeon the eve of election have never seemed to me 
well chosen modes of promoting the cause of truth. Snch ex- 
pre siot if not always questionable, can have little utility where 
those from whom they come have previously acted exphcitly upon 
the subiect to which they refer. . y^- u 

The mquiries you address to me relate to a question which 
was severa? times presented for action during the 1-=';'=!-°" "^ 
Cono-ress and upon which my vote is repeatedly recorded. The 
C ;":;:i««/ i and the journals of the House of Represen^ 
Utiles show all these votes. They are all in favor of reducing 



28o LIFE AND LETTERS Oh ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the hours of daily labor, and you would perhaps be better satis- 
fied by my referring to them and leaving the matter there. 

It may not be amiss, however, to add that I have seen no rea- 
son to change the opinion heretofore expressed, in votes and other- 
wise, and that, never having knowingly given a vote or done an 
act hostile to the interest of human labor in the past, I mean 
never to do so in the future. 

Your obedient servant, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

Messrs. Trembly & Baxondale. 

At a mass meeting of workingmen held in Utica 
on the next day Mr. Conkhng spoke at length. 
His remarks are reported in the Herald, from 
which we give the following extract: 

Mr. Conkling said that he felt honored by the invitation to 
address such an audience, and grateful for the warmth of their re- 
ception; that he would say, notwithstanding he was a candidate 
for ofifice, that no greeting would be more welcome to him than 
one from the men who represent the enterprise and industry of 
the day. In saying this, he ascribed to workingmen honor in 
which he himself claimed some right to share. The amelioration 
of labor is one of the best methods of ennobling human nature 
and human character, by advancing human culture, human happi- 
ness and human opportunity. 

* * * The purpose of the meeting was not to instruct men 
how to vote or how not to vote, but to warn all parties, all candi- 
dates, and all hired runners for candidates, that they must never 
attempt again to put up such a cause upon the public or the pri- 
vate shambles. A handful of tricksters had attempted to mort- 
gage the labor interest to certain political candidates, and had 
attempted to bind the bargain by palming off upon the public the 
formalities and pretensions of committees, meetings, processions, 
music and other apparatus, all paid for, and all insulting to the 
public judgment and the public sense. Such a transaction, if 
tolerated, or treated even with contemptuous silcLice, would in- 
jure, if it did not ruin, any cause. 



AN ADDRESS TO WORKINGMEN. 28 1 

* * * No one would deny the propriety or patriotism of work- 
ingmen consulting their own interests in selecting the parties, the 
candidates, the measures to be supported or opposed. All 
classes of people should do this. The sewing woman whose 
slender earnings are invested in Government securities, whether 
through a savings bank or directly, does right in giving her 
voice, though she has no vote, for the party and the policy which 
she believes will make her most secure. Free Government is a 
great watch-dog, whose business it is to guard the rights and in- 
terests of the citizen, and no patriotism or duty stands in the way 
of so voting as to shape the action of Government according to 
the judgment and advantage of those who vote. * * * Election- 
eering pledges were not the evidence sought by honest men look- 
ing after truth. Past acts, whether in public or in private station, 
previous records, the every-day walk and conversation of life, 
were the things looked for by all who know that actions speak 
louder than words. In this instance, a scheme had been con- 
trived to catechize candidates, not in order to elicit what they had 
done, nor a free expression of their views, but to get an answer 
to certain concocted questions. This would have been suspi- 
cious, even if the purpose had been simply to make the answers 
public with a view to court votes. The evidence would have 
been of a suspicious character, even if it had been put fairly be- 
fore the jury which was to pass upon it. But the managers 
thought the jury could not be trusted. Workingmen could not 
judge for themselves. They must have some one to " boss " them; 
and so this little " ring" of hired fuglemen had set up as school- 
masters, to discipline and instruct in their political A B C's the 
men who represent the enterprise and three-fourths of the busi- 
ness of Oneida County 

******* 

The election occurred November 6. For repre- 
sentative in Congress the whole number of votes 
cast was 23,523 ; of which Roscoe Conkling re- 
ceived 12,470, and Palmer V. Kellogg 11,053, thus 
giving the former a majority of 1,417. 



282 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Reuben E. Fenton, for Governor, had 12,431 
votes, or thirty-nine less than Mr. Conkling. 

The demonstration of the Unionists of Utica 
and vicinity, held in that city on the Saturday 
evening after the election (November 10), was 
imposing in point of numbers, and marked by a 
degree of enthusiasm in keeping with the occasion. 

Mr. Conkling spoke substantially as follows : 

Fellcnv-traitors on the Northern Side of the " Circle : " 

For the compliment and kindness of tliis greeting, I beg you 
all to accept my grateful acknowledgments, and the assurance 
that I feel proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in the 
treason in which you are engaged. 

You celebrate an event for which every patriot of every party 
ought to be glad, and thankful too, to that Providence which rules 
the destinies of nations and of men. 

Four great States have just rendered a verdict for the safety 
and salvation of the nation; they have calmly considered the 
question proposed by Mr. Seward, whether they prefer Andrew 
Johnson " as President or as King," and the answer is; they don't 
prefer him as either. 

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa have all solemnly regis- 
tered their vows that blood-stained traitors shall not govern us, 
but that a ransomed country shall be ruled by loyal men. These 
four great States have branded and blasted the assumptions and 
usurpations of a passionate and perfidious President, and have 
spurned the menaces, the patronage, the bribes and the base ap- 
pliances by which it was hoped the people might be corrupted 
and betrayed. Everything vile that can enter into politics has 
been banded together, and it has been beaten down by the vir- 
tue and courage of the people. 

The jay hawkers, the bushwhackers, the guerrillas, the political 
bounty jumpers of all parties, locked arms to carry Andrew 
Johnson through, and he put into their hands, as pillage and plun- 



A MEMORABLE ELECTION. 283 

der to be used to gain votes, all the patronage and jobbing of 
the Government. On the other hand, with nothing but right and 
duty to inspire them, the honest men of all parties locked arms 
to carry the country through, and the country is triumphant. 
Many honest men in the first instance gave their countenance to 
the movement for the President, but finding that they had been 
deceived and imposed upon, they have quietly ranged themselves 
under the banner of the Union party, and from this class has 
come a " ground swell " which carries all before it. 

***** -x- * 

Apostasy is not leadership. Frailty, disappointed ambition, or 
revenge do not lead a nation like ours in an epoch like this. 
******* 

The people, taking not only the Constitution, but their affairs 
generally, into their own hands, have marked out their policy in 
lines too strong to be mistaken. Seven States have done so. 
Maine and Vermont send united delegations by unwonted major- 
ities. Little Connecticut, a Democratic State, in her local elec- 
tions shows that a majority of six thousand free voices cry out 
against the one-man power domineering over the country in the 
interest of treason. Baltimore, where, only four years ago, a 
Massachusetts regiment could not march without being murdered, 
gives twenty-eight hundred majority for Parliament against King. 
Newark, in New Jersey, the only Northern State which voted for 
Geoi'ge B. McClellan, says, by twelve hundred majority, that no 
man shall hold a place in her city government who endorses 
Andrew Johnson. Iowa, dropping in the nomination the only 
member of her delegation who hesitated in Congress, sends a 
solid phalanx of earnest men. Indiana gives sixteen thousand 
majority for Congress, and five hundred even in the district for- 
merly represented by Daniel W. Voorhees. 

******* 

Mr. Welles, '■'■ the ancient mariner," tumbled into Philadelphia, 
it seems, some thousands of non-residents, under pretence of 
employing them in the Navy-Yard there. Virginia, Maryland 
and Delaware seem to have furnished each its quota of rebels 
colonized in Pennsylvania to vote for Clymer, but all to no pur- 
pose. Eighteen thousand for Geary is the general result, three 



284 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

members of Congress are gained, and the Lancashire district, 
whose representative Andrew Johnson says should be hung, has 
sent back brave Thaddeus Stevens by sixty-three hundred ma- 
jority. 

In the United States Senate the President has lost more than 
in the House. The Union gain in the Senate is three already. 
Corbett in Oregon and Cattell in New Jersey, are both gains, 
and Edgar Cowan has been frowned down by an indignant peo- 
ple, amid the jeers even of those who have made gain of his rec- 
reancy. 

* * -Sf * * -K- * 

Congress has proposed an amendment to the Constitution, to 
make your securities and property safe, to insure the Northern 
people against being taxed hereafter to pay rebel debts or dam- 
ages, and to make a loyal man at the North the equal of a rebel 
at the South, m place of leaving one rebel at the South the equal 
of three loyal men at the North in governing the country. 
* * ^ * * * * 

When Mr. Lincoln lived, we used to be told that the army of 
office-holders and the patronage of the Government carried 
elections. Now all this is reversed; everything of place and of 
power is in the hands of murdered Lincoln's foes; his friends 
have nothing but the faith he held, and that they mean to keep 
like "the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." 

He voted with eighty-nine others December 17, 
1866, for a resolution proposing to impeach Presi- 
dent Johnson. 



Part Second. 



1867. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE YOUNG SENATOR. 

" I ^HE Empire State was represented in the United 
States Senate by ex-Governor Edwin D. 
Morgan and ex-Judge Ira Harris. The term of the 
latter was about to expire on March 4, 1867, and 
the New York Legislature of that winter was called 
upon to elect his successor. During the previous 
December the press of the State, to a large extent, 
proposed Roscoe Conkling, and the movement 
was not confined to the Republican journals. In- 
deed, the younger and more progressive element 
in the party regarded him as the coming man. 

He perceived the opportunity and was prompt 
to grasp it. He had studied the " situation " in 
every county of the State. He was confident of 
his own strength and influence with the leaders 
and easily secured their allegiance. 

The canvass for Mr. Conkling collected round 

285 



286 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

him that band of powerful and able politicians 
who were afterward known as the " Stalwarts" of 
New York. He visited Albany and just before 
his nomination wrote the following characteristic 
letter to his wife. At the present day (1889), 
when the election of United States Senators is 
generally imputed to bribery, it is gratifying to 
note that Roscoe Conkling's political promotion 
was 7iot due to an improper use of money. 

Delavan House — with a pillow \ 
to write on, in a bedroom next to V 
" Parlor 65," Sunday morn. ] 

My dear J . 

* * * In an experience somewhat varied, tho' short, I have 
never been in just such a place. On reaching here Tuesday night, 
on entering the outer door I found myself in the midst of a crowd 
waiting, and after tossing round as it swayed, and shaking hands 
for a space, I came at last to the foot of the stairs, and went up 
with a rush to the two " ladies' parlors," which had " Private Par- 
lor" on big cards hanging on them, and which had been set apart 
for me. Here the crowd took and held possession till about 3 
o'clock next morning. Hundreds came and went, and until 
Thursday night this continued from early morning to early morn- 
ing again. 

* * * The contest is a very curious and complex one. I 
could not write you the particulars even if you would care for 
them. But as it stands I can be chosen, and shall be, I think. 

Great sums of money are among the influences here. I have 
resolutely put down my foot upon the ground that no friend of 
mine, even without my knowledge, shall pay a cent, upon any pre- 
text nor in any strait, come what will. If chosen, it will be by 
the men of character, and if beaten this will be my consolation. 

By-the-by, letters reached New York yesterday from Mr. Bry- 
ant, in Paris, asking his friends to make every effort for me. The 



ELECTED TO THE SENATE. 287 

same from Parke Godwin. In many instances, some of which I 
shall tell you of, the quality of the support I have is so far above 
my deserts that it abashes me. 

The gamblers say that I can have $200,000 here from New 
York in a moment if I choose, and that the members are fools to 
elect me without it; only think of it ! 

But I won't weary you with all this. The whole thing has been 
amusing and instructive. No political result personal to me can 
disturb or excite me, and so I have been as well able as the idlest 
speculator to enjoy the oddities and lessons of the thing. * * * 

Affectionately, 

R. C. 

Mrs. Conkling, Utica. 

The Republican caucus by which he was nomi- 
nated for Senator was held January 9, 1867. The 
other chief candidates were the retiring" Senator, 
Judge Ira Harris, and Noah Davis, then of Orleans 
County, since so distinguished on the bench in the 
city of New York. Fifty-five votes were necessary 
for the nomination. 

Five ballots were taken, as follows: 

First. Second. Third. Fourth. 



Conkling, 


ZZ 


39 


45 


53 


Davis, 


30 


41 


44 


50 


Harris, 


32 


24 


18 


6 


Balcom, 


7 


4 


2 


— 


Greeley, 


6 


— 


— 


— 



Folger, I I — ■ — 

On the fifth and final ballot Mr. Conkling re- 
ceived fifty-nine votes, to forty -nine for Judge 
Davis. The Legislature elected him in due form. 

Of the name " Republican," Roscoe Conkhng 



288 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

was not tenacious. When nominated for United 
States Senator, he, in his repHes to congratulatory 
speeches, twice referred to the RepubUcan party 
as giving up its existence, and being succeeded 
by the "Union party. "^" 

On the night of his election the new Senator 
received a perfect ovation at the Delavan House. 
His friends, giving way to their enthusiasm, bore 
him on their shoulders through the corridors. 
Considering Mr. Conkling's objection to having 
his person touched, this was a trying ordeal to 
pass through. 

This rapid progress of a generous ambition was 
thus crowned with a double success, which, per- 
haps, had no precedent in New York politics. The 
new Senator took his seat, not only with the warm 
support and confidence of his own party, but with 
the best wishes of political opponents. Not a 
Democratic journal in the State of New York spoke 
unkindly of his election. The feeling of the more 
gallant of the Democratic party was voiced by one 
who declared that it "was a triumph, not of gold, 
but of intellect," and who congratulated the people 
of New York that they would "now be heard in 

* This term was used during the early part of the Civil War, when an 
unsuccessful attempt was made to substitute for the Republican organi- 
zation the Union party, as consisting of patriotic supporters of the Govern- 
ment without reference to former distinction. The proposition having 
been abandoned, Mr. Conkling's revival of the term was misunderstood 
and caused much comment. 



HE SPURNS PATRONAGE. 



289 



the United States Senate chamber in a manner 
which will make the old State feel proud." 

On the day after his election the Loyal League 
of Utica (which, as already stated, was a patriotic 
organization formed in 1863) assembled to cele- 
brate the success of their standard-bearer. A 
series of resolutions recognizing his public services 
was adopted. These were transmitted to Wash- 
ington by Dr. L. W. Rogers, the president. A few 
days later the Senator-elect expressed his gratitude 
in a letter which was published in the Utica Herald. 

Mr. Conkling's great activity in politics made 
the county of Oneida a centre of political power. 

To obtain patronage from an Administration 
which he despised was not in accordance with his 
feelings and convictions. He cast executive favor 
to the winds, and would recommend candidates for 
office only ivhen asked by the members of the Cabinet, 
as may be seen by the following letter : 

House of Representatives, 
Committee of Ways and Means, 
Washington, D. C, January 28, 1867. 
Sir: — In conformity with your request that I recommend suit- 
able persons for the Collectorship and Assessorship of my Dis- 
trict (the 2ist New York), now vacant, I have the honor to make 
the following recommendations: 

For Collector, Levi Blakeslee. 
For Assessor, Chas. M. Dennison. 
I have the honor to be, your ob't serv't, 

RoscoE Conkling. 
The Hon. Hugh McCulloch, Sec., etc. 

19 



290 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Although in the preceding chapters we have 
given in detail the official acts of Roscoe Conkling 
during his three terms in the House of Represent- 
atives, it will hardly be possible to present more 
than an outline of his Senatorial career. 

Mr. Conkling entered the Senate March 4, 1867, 
Congress assembling at that date in obedience to 
a law just enacted. 

Surrounded by such prominent associates as 
Oliver P. Morton, the " War Governor" of Indiana, 
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Zachariah 
Chandler of Michigan, and James W. Nye, for- 
merly from New York, but afterward of Nevada, 
Mr. Conkling began his fourteen years of ser- 
vice in the Senate. It included the last two years 
of Andrew Johnson's term as President, from the 
period of his efforts to obstruct and defeat the Re- 
construction laws, to his escape, by a bare minority 
of one vote, from removal by impeachment. Mr. 
Johnson denied the legitimacy of the new State 
governments recognized by Congress, and he 
also denied the validity of the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment. 

Mr. Conkling was a member of the Commit- 
tees on Appropriations, Judiciary, and Mines and 
Mining. Only twenty - seven States were then 
represented in the Senate; and, one of the Sena- 
tors from Maryland being refused a seat, there 



HIS MAIDEN SPEECH. 29 1 

were but fifty-three in all. At the close of Mr. 
Conkling's first term, the Reconstruction period 
had ended, and Senators from eleven more States 
had been admitted, making in all seventy -six 
members. During his long service in the Senate 
Mr. Conkling often consulted with his towns- 
men, Mr. Justice Ward Hunt and ex-Governor 
Horatio Seymour, the one a Republican, the other 
a Democrat. He thus obtained two political 
opinions upon important public and private 
measures. 

His maiden speech in the Senate was delivered 
March 23, 1867. The debate was upon the pro- 
posed impeachment of Henry A. Smythe, Collector 
of the Port of New York. Mr. Conkling's effort 
is thus described by the Washington Chronicle. 

Roscoe Conkling then rose, and for twenty-five minutes 
electrified the Senate with a clear and convincing defence and 
justification of the New York Representative (Mr. Hulburd). 
When he had concluded, the Senate was checked in its purpose 
to treat the House imperiously, and unanimously referred the 
whole question to the Judiciary Committee. No new Senator has 
ever made in so short a time such rapid strides to a commanding 
position in that body as Roscoe Conkling. 

The Chicago Republican of March 28 also thus 
described him : 

* * * Roscoe Conkling, the new member from New York, 
who, though the youngest man, as well as the youngest Sena- 
tor, on the floor, is already the leader of the Senate. * * * 



292 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



The supplementary reconstruction bill, in which 
Mr. Conkling was much interested, was vetoed 
by President Johnson, March 23, the Senate having 
lately passed it without a division. This measure 
was repassed on the same day by a vote of forty 
yeas to seven nays. Mr. Conkling voted in the 
affirmative. 

He had now become a prominent object of atten- 
tion from the newspaper correspondents. Mary 
Clemmer Ames remarks: 

* * * His bearing is that of a lawyer. He is an elegant 
speaker. His voice, fine and penetrating, never lacks volume, but 
sometimes variety, and when not moved by excitement his fall- 
ing inflections are monotonous and heavy. 

Perhaps during his three terms as Senator, Ros- 
coe Conkling was more frequently reported and 
described than any of his associates. His strong 
personality and picturesque manner of expression 
had made him a central figure. When the re- 
porters in the gallery seemed to be short of topics 
they would write about him. 

Both Houses of Congress voted to adjourn the 
extra session from March 30 to July 3. The Pres- 
ident then called, by proclamation, a special 
session to meet April i, which sat for eighteen 
days. 

During the short recesses Mr. Conkling tried 
two important criminal cases. The first was that 



THE LOOMIS GANG. 



29; 



of the People of the State of New York vs. Filklns, 
which was long held in vivid remembrance in 
Oneida County. 

This case may be thus described : 

In June, 1867, Mr. Conkling made one of his most brilliant 
efforts when acting as senior counsel in the famous trial of one 
Filkins, at Rome. This case and the circumstances will long be 
memorable in the history of Central New York. A family by 
the name of Loomis lived at Sangerfield, in the southeastern cor- 
ner of Oneida County. There were a mother, two daughters and 
four sons, George, Grove, Plumb and Dennis. To all appearance 
they were well-to-do and respectable, owning a farm of two to 
three hundred acres, with good buildings, fine stock, abmidance 
of help and other signs of thrift. As neighbors they were cour- 
teous, obliging and of pleasing manners. At this time, how- 
ever, suspicion fell upon them. There occurred numerous in- 
stances of horse stealing and burglary, extending far into the ad- 
joining counties, and evidence soon showed it to be the work of a 
single organized gang. The Loomises were ascertained to be at 
the head. Their house was the headquarters, to which resorted 
desperate characters from far and wide, men and women, experts 
in crime. It seemed impossible, however, to bring them to jus- 
tice. When accused they were defended by able counsel, and if 
brought to trial the jury would fail to agree upon a conviction. 
Important witnesses would be spirited away, while others would 
be produced to testify to an alibi. Even indictments were sur- 
reptitiously taken away, and on one occasion the county clerk's 
office was burned by incendiaries on purpose to destroy the 
evidences of guilt. Ten years before, in 1857, one of the fam- 
ily had been indicted for forgery in Oneida County, and the 
District- Attorney, when going home late at night from his office, 
was set upon and his pocket-book robbed of the incriminating 
paper. 

This Loomis gang was notorious over the continent. Even the 
London Quarterly Review and the Westminster Review had articles 
setting forth their crimes, as illustrating the impunity enjoyed by 



294 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 



lawless individuals in the United States. The patience of the 
community, however, finally gave way. An assemblage of people, 
exasperated beyond the pitch of endurance, took the matter into 
their own hands. Repairing to the Loomis farm, they set fire to 
the buildings and threatened death to those ever daring to rebuild 
them. Grove Loomis was beaten till his life was in imminent 
peril ; Plumb was suspended to a tree and let down barely in time 
to save him ; and George, the oldest and chief of the gang, was 
killed outright. These summary proceedings were effectual to dis- 
perse the surviving members. 

At the head of the assailants was Filkins, a resident in the 
neighborhood. He was a powerful man, insensible to fear, and 
he held the office of deputy-sheriff. On the fifteenth of November 
ensuing he was indicted on the charges of murder and arson. 
The trial took place at Rome, in June, 1867, the Hon. Henry A. 
Foster presiding. The prosecution was conducted by Hiram T. 
Jenkins, District-Attorney, and John A. Martindale, Attorney- 
General ; and the defence, by Roscoe Conkling and J. T. Spriggs. 
Mr. Conkling called the attention of the court to the fact that the 
grand jury, instead of the evidence of witnesses in person, had 
accepted that of affidavits alone. He moved, therefore, that the 
indictment be quashed. The hearing of this motion was set 
down for the next morning. Mr. Conkling was on hand with a 
formidable array of authorities. He had also brought with him 
the English magazines having articles upon the inability of the 
civil authorities to bring the Loomis gang to justice. He read 
and commented on these, and portrayed in vivid colors the dire 
results of such irregularity as existed in the case of this indict- 
ment. His opponents could answer him only by generalities and 
vague declarations. The motion was granted and Filkins set free. 
It was a splendid triumph. 

The Loomis brothers prosecuted the county of Oneida for 
the destruction of their buildings by a mob, and received a verdict 
for a small amount ; but their confederacy was utterly broken up, 
and the burned buildings were never rebuilt. 

The following' correspondence between Mr. 
Greeley and Mr. Conkling explains itself: 



LETTER FROM HORACE GREELEY. 



295 



[Confidential.] 

Office of the Tribune, | 
New York, September 7, 1867. j 
Dear Sir: It is represented to me that the ex-rebels of a 
leading Southern State are disposed to organize under the Re- 
construction acts of Congress, ratify the amendments, and send 
members to Congress who can take the iron-clad oath. If this 
should be done, would they not, in your judgment, be promptly 
admitted? Would they be, or would you favor their being, kept 
out till the other Rebel States should see fit to do likewise? 

Yours, 

Horace Greeley. 
Hon. R. CoNKLiNG, Utica, N. Y. 

Utica, September 14, 1867. 

My Dear Sir: Just at home, I find your note. Replying to 

your inquiry — it seems to me that any State complying with the 

prerequisites to recognition ought not to be compelled to abide 

the event in some other State. On the contrary, the pioneer in 

good behavior should be commended in that character, as was 

Tennessee. 

Truly Yours, 

Roscoe Conkling. 
The Hon. Horace Greeley. 

Roscoe Conkling had not been in the Senate 
many months before RepubUcan newspapers in 
some of the Northern States began to mention him 
as a possible candidate for the Presidency in the 
next year. General Grant then was not regarded 
with approval by many zealous Republican poli- 
ticians. It became evident, however, as time 
elapsed, that the people were in his favor. 

The Republican State Convention of 1867 met 
at Syracuse, September 25. The temporary chair- 



296 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

man had no sooner announced the Committee on 
Permanent Organization than Senator Edward 
M. Madden offered a resolution instructing them 
to report the name of the Hon. Roscoe Conkhng 
as president of the Convention. This was a point 
"scored " over the friends of Governor Fenton. 
On taking the chair that afternoon, Mr. Conkhng 
made a forcible address severely censuring the 
acts and policy of President Johnson. 

He next went from Syracuse to Binghamton 
to defend two physicians upon a charge of arson. 
This case aroused much public interest, and may 
be briefly described as follows: 

Dr. T , the founder of the inebriate asylum, was jointly 

indicted with Dr. G for setting fire to the institution. 

There was a strong local feeling against the defendants, and Mr. 
Conkling, as well as his associate, the Hon. Francis Kernan, was 
uneasy as to the result. The trial began in the court of Oyer 
and Terminer, September 30, and lasted several days. On the 
opening of the case, Roscoe Conkling moved that the defendants 
be given a separate trial. This motion was granted. The Dis- 
trict-Attorney then decided to try Dr. G . 

This cause gave Mr. Conkling an opportunity to display his 
wonderful power over a judge and jury. Several hours were spent 
in examining talesmen before a single juror was chosen. 

The Senator raised many points, and, under the pretext of ad- 
dressing the court, was really seeking to influence those spec- 
tators who were liable to be called as jurors. After the trial had 
begun and much testimony had been taken, Mr. Kernan moved 
for an acquittal, but the motion was denied. Mr. Conkling, in 
his turn, then summed up at great length for the defence; and 
the jury, after having retired for deliberation, returned in five 
minutes with a verdict of not guilty. Judge Balcom, who pre- 



A TRIAL FOR ARSON. 



297 



sided, then ordered the indictment against Dr. T to be 

quashed. 

It has been stated in preceding chapters that Senator Conkling 
defended many persons under indictment for arson, but the case 
at Binghamton seems to have been the last criminal cause in 
which he accepted a retainer. During the remainder of his public 
life his legal practice was chiefly connected with corporations that 
were litigants in the district and circuit courts of the United 
States. 

Soon afterward the Senator was asked to ad- 
dress the Repubhcans of the city of New York, 
and wrote a long letter explaining his inability 
to attend. 

Mr. Conkling made a long speech at Utica, 
October 31, devoting himself chiefly to his spe- 
cialty of Reconstruction. 

The election was held November 5 and the Re- 
publican ticket defeated. 

The second session of the Fortieth Congress be- 
gan December 2, 1867. 

The parliamentary history of Roscoe Conkling, 
from this period to his resignation from the Senate 
in 1 88 1, would be a history of the legislation in 
that body. He took such an active part in the 
debates, speaking sometimes even four successive 
hours, that his utterances alone would fill a large 
volume. We give the substance only of some of 
his principal speeches and occasional extracts from 
the debates. 

While in the Senate Mr. Conkling was one of 



298 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK'LING. 

its most industrious members. He was seldom 
out of his seat. He rarely took part in a discus- 
sion, except when the matter under consideration 
was of importance to the country, or at least to 
the people of his own State. He was nevertheless 
a careful listener, and would put questions to the 
Senator on the floor which showed him thorough- 
ly conversant with the whole matter. Often 
when he seemed to be absorbed m reading letters 
or newspapers, or in writing, and utterly uncon- 
scious of what was going on, he would in an un-- 
expected moment interrupt the person speaking 
with a question or suggestion that showed him at- 
tentive all the time to what was said. 

He carefully scrutinized the character and ante- 
cedents of new Senators, and studied their strong 
points as well as their infirmities. He watched 
their action and characteristic displays when they 
did not suspect it, and made a critical measure- 
ment of every one. When any of them made his 
first address in the Senate, Roscoe Conkling was 
certain to listen attentively. Many felt this to be 
a compliment, but to most of them it was pain- 
fully embarrassing. In this way he made himself 
able to predict every man's action with certainty. 
On one occasion, in conversation with the author, 
he thus analyzed certain members. He said," Sen- 
ator A. has been in the army; he has very decid- 



7'HE PRESIDENT IS IMPEA CUED. 



299 



ed views on this subject; Senator B. is a lawyer, 
and open to conviction; and Senator C. is here to 
watch certain interests, and will not favor this bill." 

Mr. Conkling continued to act his part in Re-^ 
construction legislation, and spoke at length upon 
this subject in February. 

The chief topic of the session was the impeach- 
ment of Andrew Johnson, the only President that 
has ever been impeached. After a long debate, 
the House passed a resolution (February 24) to 
impeach him. For several days the Senate con-, 
sidered the measure, and the members were sworn 
by the Chief-Justice, March 5.* 

The famous trial began March 13. In Mr. Conk- 
ling's copy of the eleven articles of impeachment 
he underscored those relating to the removal of the 
Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, in violation of law. 

Five of the most eminent lawyers in the United 
States defended the President. Their names are 
Benjamin R. Curtis, William M. Evarts, Henry 
Stanbery, William S. Groesbeck and Thomas A. 
R. Nelson. 

Mr. Conkling made no speech, nor did he de- 
liver any written opinion during the trial, but he 
took an active part in the proceedings. 

* To show that nothing escaped him it may be stated that, in his re- 
marks concerning the admission by ticket of visitors to the gallery, Mr. 
Conkling said that he had ordered an inspection of the seats, and that their 
capacity was limited to S76 persons by close count. 



300 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

While the impeachment was in progress he re- 
ceived from constituents two long open letters 
favoring the President. One was written upon 
one of Mr. Conkling's own utterances, viz., 
** There is power in the honest sense of men." 
Both letters were learned and historical. They 
sustained the arguments of the President's coun- 
sel, notably that of the Hon. Benjamin R. Curtis. 
These publications give but a faint idea of the 
strong speculative sentiment on the side of the 
accused in the North. 

The test vote upon impeachment was taken 
May 1 6. With regard to the " eleventh article," 
thirty-five voted " guilty," and nineteen " not 
guilty." 

Roscoe Conkling stood for conviction in com- 
pany with Anthony, Cameron, Chandler, Ed- 
munds, Frelinghuysen, Morgan (his colleague), 
Morton, Nye, Sherman, Sumner, Wade and other 
Republicans. Of the nineteen who favored ac- 
quittal, nine were Republicans, including Fessen- 
den, Grimes and Trumbull; but these nine mem- 
bers were severely criticised by the Republican 
press, and it was rumored that improper influ- 
ences had been brought to bear upon some of 
them. 

A motion to adjourn until July i was made 
upon the same day, but it was defeated by a vote 



HE VOTES FOR CONVICTION. 3OI 

of twenty to thirty-four, Mr. Conkling voting in 
the negative. After further debate upon a motion 
to adjourn " without day," it was agreed that the 
Senate should meet again on the twenty-sixth in- 
stant. In the interval Senator Conkling suffered 
severely by illness, and it was feared that he could 
not resume his seat at the next sitting. He, how- 
ever, dispelled this belief. If unable to walk, he 
declared he would be carried to the Senate chamber 
on a shutter, with the vote '' QmuYY'' pinned to his 
coat. 

The trial closed May 26, when the Senate, as 
a court of impeachment, met for the last time. 
After a brief debate the roll was again called upon 
the articles of impeachment. 

The result was unchanged, as but thirty-five 
still voted for conviction, and nineteen for ac- 
quittal. Two-thirds, or thirty-six votes, being nec- 
essary, the Chief -Justice pronounced Andrew 
Johnson "not guilty" of high misdemeanors as 
charged in the articles of impeachment. There- 
upon the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment 
for the trial of Andrew Johnson upon charges 
formulated by the House of Representatives, ad- 
journed sine die. 

Mr. Conkling did not hesitate to make it known 
that the failure to convict Andrew Johnson was 
to him a great disappointment, and during the re- 



•502 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

maining year of the President's term, he was in 
the front rank of his antagonists. 

During the impeachment trial he received from 
Professor Louis Agassiz the following letter : 

My Dear Sir: Will you permit me for half an hour to forget 
that you are a Senator for New York, and allow me to have a lit- 
tle talk with you on a matter I hold to be of the highest impor- 
tance. 

The greatness of a nation in our days can no longer be meas- 
ured by its military power, nor by its wealth, nor even by its 
industrial activity. What it does for the advancement of the 
human mind, for the expansion of the grasp which that mind ex- 
ercises for good upon all the material powers of the earth, and 
the human intellect itself, that is the true standard of national 
excellence; and I believe that, before you have reached this climax 
of active life, it will be so acknowledged by all nations in whom 
the spirit of freedom has the slightest root. 

Only three times, thus far, has the United States Government 
done anything directly for the advancement of human knowledge; 
for, as long as it does not provide for its National Academy and 
only gives it a charter, I do not think the organization of that 
body can be quoted as a fourth instance. The first example is 
that of the United States Exploring Expedition, which, with all 
its defects, has done more to establish our character abroad as an 
intellectual nation than anything else outside of our political or- 
ganization. 

The second case is that of the National Observatory since it 
has been allowed to do scientific work besides regulating the 
chronometers of the navy. 

The third is the Coast Survey, with its annually recurring strug- 
gles for existence. It is the present condition of that great organ- 
ization which induces me to write to you. I learn from my friend 
Pierce that there is danger of a curtailment of the appropriation. 
I believe that it would be a calamity for the nation were such an 
undertaking reduced in its operations. The Coast Survey is es- 
sentially the nurse of all higher science in the country. Through 



LETTER FROM PROFESSOR AGASSIZ. 303 

it are carried on, and by it are supported, in the regular course of 
its operations, those higher researches in physical geography and 
physical astronomy for which neither our colleges nor our local 
academies have any place. The reduction of the appropriation 
for the Coast Survey would not only be an interruption of one of 
the most useful works carried on by Government (and during 
the war it may be fairly said that it was the right arm of the 
Navy), but it would at the same time kill the career of the few 
men we have who prefer the modest existence of a scientific life 
to that of more remunerative pursuits. 

It is a thousand pities that our public men do not keep more 
constantly in mind the intellectual interests of the nation, and 
that their best efforts in that direction amount only to rhetorical 
flourish. 

I know how truly you can appreciate these things, and it is, 
therefore, to you I now appeal to do your share for the mainte- 
nance of one of the glories of this country. It would be worthy 
of your great powers and general culture to stand as the cham- 
pion of the highest learning in the land, and I am not the only 
one who entertains that hope of you. 

Permit me to inscribe myself. 

Very truly yours, 

L. Agassiz. 

Hon. RoscoE Conkling, 

Cambridge, April 6, 1868. 

You will excuse me for writing by a friend's hand; but I have 
been confined to my room for a fortnight by a severe fit of illness, 
and do not yet feel even up to the exertion of writing a letter ex- 
cept by dictation. 

As a member of the Judiciary Committee Mr. 
Conkling strenuously insisted upon the strict en- 
forcement of the tenure of office act of 1867. 
The President was removing the federal office- 
holders who refused to approve of his policy, and 
filling the vacancies with his own followers. That 



304 LIP^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

law had been enacted to prevent his " revolution- 
ary " measures, and the vital section of it was that 
if the person named was not confirmed by the Sen- 
ate the present incumbent must retain the office 
during the recess of Congress.^" 

In his Reminiscences, Ben Perley Poore says : 

In the great struggle which ensued between the President 
and Congress, the Senate was really under the leadership of Ros- 
coe Conkling, although Sumner, Fessenden and Wade each 
regarded himself as at the head of the Republicans in the Upper 
House. Mr. Conkling was at that time a type of manly beauty. 
Tall, well made, with broad shoulders and compact chest and an 
erect carriage, he was always dressed with scrupulous neatness, 
wearing a dark frock-coat, light-colored vest and trousers, with 
gaiters buttoned over his shoes. His nose was large and promi- 
nent, his eyes of a bluish-gray hue, surmounted by heavy dark 
auburn eyebrows; his side-whiskers curled closely, and his hair 
ran down with a sharp point into the middle of his broad, bald 
forehead, where it rose in a curl. His language was elegant, and 
when he spoke on the floor every word was clearly enunciated, 
while slow and deliberate gestures lent effect to what he said. At 
times, when his features would light up with animation, his deep 
nostrils would quiver, and lengthen into the expression of scorn, 
which would often lash an opponent into fury. His manner tow- 
ard strangers was at times dictatorial, but his personal friends 
worshiped him, and they have never thrown off their allegiance. 

During April Mr. Conkling took a leading part 
in the debate on the naval appropriation bill. The 
time for the nomination of a Presidential candi- 
date was approaching. The general sentiment 

* During the following winter (February, 1869) Senator Conkling, 
considering the coming inauguration of General Grant, spoke in favor of 
amending this law on account of the e-xigency for it having been passed. 



NOMINA TION OF GRANT. 305 

throughout the North had indicated General Grant 
as the man. 

The RepubUcan National Convention met at Chi- 
cago in the month of May, 1868. General Joseph 
R. Hawley was chosen permanent president. The 
hero of Appomattox was nominated without oppo 
sition on the informal ballot. There was a contest 
for second place, Governor Reuben E. Fenton be- 
ing one of the four aspirants ; but Senator Conk- 
Hng's friends bitterly opposed Mr. Fenton, and 
after six ballots Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, re- 
ceived the nomination. The Democrats met in 
National Convention, July 4, at Tammany Hall, 
New York. Horatio Seymour presided over its 
deliberations. On the twenty-second ballot he was 
nominated for President, and Francis P. Blair, of 
Missouri, was given the place for Vice-President, 
The Senate adjourned July 26, to meet again Sep^ 
tember 21. No quorum being present, further ad- 
journments were made till October 16 and Novem- 
ber 10. The three adjourned sessions lasted but 
a day each and the Senate did not convene until 
the regular day in December.' 

When Mr. Conkling left Washington and re- 
turned to Utica in August, he was complimented 
with a serenade at the Butterfield House. The 
members of the Loyal League were present in 
force, and the Senator, appearing upon the bal- 



306 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

cony, briefly addressed the company. Among 
other things he said : 

When a man's neighbors, who have known him long and well, 
who know his errors, his foibles and his faults, still give him their 
confidence and respect, when, returning after a long absence, he 
finds that a place has been kept for him on the roll of kindly re- 
membered names — that man, whoever he may be, is the recipient 
of the greatest gratification, the greatest satisfaction that man can 
give or take away. 

He then exhorted his hearers to support the Re- 
pubUcan candidates on the Presidential and State 
tickets, saying that " the peace, prosperity and 
progress of the country hang upon the election of 
Grant and Colfax, of Griswold and Cornell." 

At this time Mr. Conkling bought the Miller 
mansion in Rutger Park, Utica. It is worthy of 
remark that he purchased it out of the proceeds of 
a single year of legal practice, thus showing what 
he had earned during his late absence from public 
life and how much he was losing by resuming his 
place in Congress. This house became his per- 
manent residence, and so it remained till his death. 
Even after resuming the practice of law in the city 
of New York he always returned to Utica to vote. 
His pleasant home may be thus described : 

The house is square and of stuccoed stone, two stories high and 
painted gray. Its architecture is somewhat antiquated. It has 
an old-fashioned portico in front, an old-fashioned square roof, 
and two great chimneys on either end. The glass in the windows 
is of the small panes in use sixty years ago. The shutters on the 



DESCRIPTION OF HIS HOUSE. 307 

outside are of the olden kind. The only thing modern about the 
place is a private telephone wire. The lawn is spacious, and with 
flower-beds artistically arranged. It is inclosed by an iron fence, 
the front gates of which are always open. From the portico one 
looks across Rutgers Street and down John Street. 

The interior, though not elegant, is comfortable. The front- 
door opens into a broad hall, with dining-room and billiard-room 
on the one side and spacious parlors on the other. On the walls 
of the hall several antlers of elk and deer are hung. The Senator 
prized them highly, for they were brought from the Rocky Mount- 
ains by him at great inconvenience. The hall is also ornamented 
by oil portraits of Senator Conkling's parents, and engravings of 
Grant and Sheridan.* The most interesting part of the house 
is, perhaps, the library on the second floor. Here the Senator 
held frequent conferences with his political lieutenants and pre- 
pared many forensic arguments and campaign addresses. Several 
book-cases are filled with valuable volumes, most of which per- 
tain to modern history, literature and jurisprudence. The walls 
are adorned with favorite photographs and engravings, among 
which are those of Lord Byron, Daniel Webster, ex-Senator W. 
W. Eaton, of Connecticut, and President Santa Anna, of Mexico. 
The last-named was presented by the President to Judge Conk- 
ling during his official residence in Mexico. This house, as al- 
ready stated, was always regarded by the Senator as his residence 
and it is still (1889) occupied by his widow. 

* Several years later Generals Grant and Sherman visited the Conk- 
ling mansion. ' 



i868. 
CHAPTER XVII. 

A TRIP TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS — THE PRESIDENTIAL 
CAMPAIGN FINANCIAL BILLS IN THE SENATE. 

TN the summer of 1868 Senator Conkling made 
his first trip to the Rocky Mountains. He 
was accompanied by Mr. Justice Ward Hunt, Pro- 
fessor Louis Agassiz, the Hon. Samuel Hooper, 
Dr. W. H. Watson (his family physician), Mr. E. 
F. Shonnard, the Hon. Richard Franchot, the Hon. 
Alfred C. Coxe (now United States Judge for the 
Northern District of New York), and Mr. P. V. 
Rogers. 

On the outward journey the party stopped at 
Harrisburg, Pa., to visit Simon Cameron, who was 
a warm friend of Senator Conkling. Here Mr. 
Conkling heard with deep regret of the death 
of his old counselor and Congressional champion, 
Thaddeus Stevens. A trip was then made to 
Galena, where the party visited General Grant. 
The great General gave them a social reception, 
to which a large number of the citizens were 

invited. After returning to the special train, 

308 



A TRIP TO THE FAR WEST. 3O9 

the Senator said to one of the party : ''That little 
man, no matter what his detractors may say of 
him, is to-day the most conspicuous figure on this 
planet. No man has accomplished more." 

From Galena the party took the train for Du- 
buque, and thence to St. Louis. In driving about 
the latter city Mr. Conkling viewed with admira- 
tion the statue of Thomas H. Benton. He walked 
around it again and again, apparently loath to 
leave the commanding presence of Missouri's great 
Senator. An excursion to Pilot Knob was made, 
where on the highest rock a bottle of wine was 
opened, and the health of General Grant was drunk 
amid cheers ; after which the tourists returned to 
St. Louis, where General W. J. Palmer joined the 
company. They then proceeded to Kansas City. 
The next stopping-place was Lawrence, where the 
Senator made the first speech of the journey. A 
serenade was tendered to him at his hotel, to which 
he responded in a happy vein. 

Going westward by way of Fort Wallace the 
party traveled to Fort Harker, Kansas, which was 
the temporary terminus of the railway. Here Mr. 
Conkling met his friend General P. H. Sheridan. 
The pair walked together about the fort, to the 
amusement of the bystanders, who seemed to say, 
" There is the long and the short of it." The re- 
mark was justified by the fact that Senator Conk- 



3IO 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



ling was six feet three inches tall, while the height 
of the hero of the Shenandoah did not exceed five 
feet four inches. 

At Fort Harker an escort of cavalry was fur- 
nished to the company (several Indian tribes being 
on the war-path) when they started for Colorado, 
some in ambulances and some on horseback. Mr. 
Conkling showed his love for horses by riding 
all the way to Denver. From Fort Harker to Den- 
ver they camped every night on the plains; and 
Mr. Conkling became much attached to General 
Palmer. 

One night, after the party had retired, these two 
gentlemen paced the ground and engaged in con- 
versation. Their associates in their tents could 
see their forms by the dim light of the camp-fire. 
For a full hour they walked to and fro, during 
which time Senator Conkling recited to his com- 
panion many passages from the speeches of his 
old Congressional associate, Thomas Corwin. Of 
these, his favorite selection from the orator's fa- 
mous denunciation of the Mexican War was as 
follows: 

When Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth was lighted 
up, that the nations might behold the scene. As that mighty sea 
of fire gathered and heaved, and rolled upward higher and yet 
higher, till its flames licked the stars and fired the whole heavens, 
it did seem as though the God of the nations was writing in char- 
acters of flame on the front of his throne that doom that shall 



MR. COR WIN'S CELEBRATED SPEECH. 311 

fall upon the strong nation which tramples in scorn upon the 
weak. 

****** -Sfr 

And France, she too has found " room." Her " eagles " now 
no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the Po and the 
Borysthenes. They have returned home to their old eyrie be- 
tween the Alps, the Rhine and the Pyrenees. So shall it be with 
yours. You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordil- 
leras; they may wave with insolent triumph in the Halls of the 
Montezumas; the armed men of Mexico may quail before them; 
but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer to the God of 
justice, may call down against you a Power in the presence of 
which the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into ashes. 

Mr. Conkling enlivened the trip by many quo- 
tations of poetry, especially some passages from 
Scott, Byron and Macaulay. 

Leaving Denver, an excursion was taken to 
Georgetown and Boulder. Mr. Conkling and the 
younger tourists were mounted, while the older 
gentlemen (Mr. Justice Hunt and Professor Agas- 
siz) took the ambulance. The ascent of Gray's 
Peak was very difficult. When near the summit a 
heavy snow-storm, accompanied by terrific thun- 
der, completely obliterated the narrow path. Most 
of the party abandoned the attempt; but the Sena- 
tor, leading his horse up the dangerous trail, suc- 
ceeded in reaching the highest point. From 
Boulder the travelers drove to Cheyenne by stage- 
coach, one of the last trips of the overland mail 
coaching- service. 

The company next went westward by rail to 



312 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Bitter Creek, in Wyoming. The latter point was 
then the terminus of the railway, and was occu- 
pied by a party of railroad builders, who were lay- 
ing a mile of track a day. Several weeks had 
now been spent in the tour, and the party turned 
their faces homeward. They traveled directly to 
Omaha by the Union Pacific line. Thence the 
Senator and his friends returned to Utica, having 
been absent about six weeks. 

During the following winter (January 25, 1869), 
in a Senatorial debate, he thus referred to his trip 
to the far West. 

The honorable Senator from Kansas [Mr. Pomeroy] at the last 
session corrected my geography in reference to Pike's Peak. He 
thought I supposed it to be much further south than in truth it 
is, and he left upon my mind the impression that one who began 
at Atchison and journeyed westward, even as far to the north 
as this road points, would some time or other encounter Pike's 
Peak. Since that time, Mr. President, I have seen Pike's Peak 
— a vision not to be forgotten; and as I saw it in its picturesque 
vastness, with its cap hidden in the clouds, I could not help wish- 
ing that it might be seen by that multitude of Americans who 
turn their backs upon their own country, which they never traverse 
in its unending stretch and grandeur, and bend their steps to the 
Alps, the Rhine and the Pyrenees. 

Returning to Utica on or about the first of Octo- 
ber, the Senator entered in earnest the political 
campaign. He exerted himself to defeat Mr. Sey- 
mour, his own brother-in-law, and to elect Ulysses 
S. Grant. He spoke a week later at Cooper Insti- 



A WITTY ANECDOTE. 313 

tute, New York. The entire speech was reported 
in the Utica Herald. On that occasion the speaker 
discussed chiefly the Finances, the Fourteenth 
Amendment, Reconstruction and the Pacific Rail- 
road. 

He next spoke in Western New York, and then 
returned to Utica and devoted his energies to 
swelHng the majority in his county. 

While walking, one day, with his old friend Ben- 
jamin Allen, he met and shook the hand of a 
swarthy Irishman who was in the employ of the 
latter. Mr. Allen said: 

" Senator, Black Paddy as we call him, has 
turned Democrat." 

" How so?" replied Mr. Conkling. Mr. Allen an- 
swered, "Because he'll vote for Governor Seymour." 

The Senator at once asked for an explanation, 
when the Irishman, getting himself out of the 
difficulty with the ready wit of his nation, said, 
" Shure, sir, oi'm payin' ye a complimint in votin' 
for yer brother-in-law." That time the Irishman 
had the advantage in the argument. 

At the national election Grant and Colfax car- 
ried every Northern State except New York and 
New Jersey, receiving 3,012,833 votes, against 
2,703,249 for their opponents. In the electoral 
college the Republican candidates obtained 214 
votes, while the Democrats had but eighty. 



314 ^Z-^-^" AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

In the State of New York the immense number 
of fraudulent naturaUzation certificates issued had 
enabled the Democrats to obtain such a majority 
that they counterbalanced the vote north of Har- 
lem Bridge. Hence John T. Hoffman was declared 
to be duly elected over Mr. Conkling's personal 
friend, John A. Griswold, of Troy. A few years 
later the Senator said, publicly, "It is a well-known 
fact that John T. Hoffman was counted in as Gov- 
ernor over John A. Griswold." 

During the last session of the Fortieth Congress 
Mr. Conkling took a leading part in opposing the 
new subsidy to the Union Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany, the repeal of the tenure of office act, and 
especially in financial legislation. 

In January, 1869, the bill to guarantee the inter- 
est (involving $2,400,000) on the bonds of the 
Central Branch Union Pacific Railroad Company, 
and to appropriate nearly two million acres, was 
before the Senate for consideration. The subject 
of this memoir, in a long speech, denounced the 
measure, and it was beaten by the close vote of 
twenty-six to twenty-seven. 

He also introduced a bill to encourage domes^ 
tic ship-building and foreign commerce, and to 
carry foreign mails by United States vessels. 

By request of many bankers and merchants, he 
offered in January "a bill to prohibit secret sale 



HIS BILL IS APPRO VED. 3 1 5 

or purchases of gold or bonds on account of the 
United States, and for other purposes," which was 
regarded as the most important measure of the 
short session. It was warmly endorsed by the 
Boards of Trade in the large cities. 
The annexed resolution explains itself. 

At a stated meeting of the Philadelphia Board of Trade, held 
on Monday evening, February 15, 1869, the following Resolution 
was unanimously adopted, and ordered to be forwarded to both 
Houses of Congress: 

Resolved, That the Philadelphia Board of Trade heartily ap- 
prove of the bill of Senator Conkling entitled " A bill to pro- 
hibit secret sales or purchases of gold or bonds on account of the 
United States, and for other purposes "—Senate file 821 — and 
do earnestly recommend its enactment as a law at the earliest 
practicable time, as tending to insure fairness and impartiality in 
the transactions of the Treasury Department, and to relieve the 
business interests of the country from the risks and fluctuations 
chargeable to secret and unforeseen dealings in the public funds. 

Jno. Welch, President. 

Extracts from the minutes. 

A. J. Perkins, Secretary. 

Similar resolutions were adopted by the Cham- 
ber of Commerce of the State of New York and 
by the Board of Trade of Chicago. 



I869-I87I. 
CHAPTER XVIII. 

SENATOR CONKLING AND PRESIDENT GRANT. 

T T P to the inauguration of Mr. Johnson, the rec- 
ognized Repubhcan leader in New York 
poUtics was William H. Seward; but, as we have 
said in a previous chapter, his adherence to the 
accidental President cost him his political life as 
the head of the party. By sheer force of will and 
character, and without federal patronage, Mr. 
Conklinor won the mantle of Seward. In New 
York no man in any political party has since 
equaled him as a leader. He had not the graces 
and winning methods of Horatio Seymour nor the 
shrewdness of Samuel J.Tilden, but he surpassed 
both in brilliancy and in strength. 

General Grant was inaugurated as President 
March 4, 1869, and at the same time Reuben E. 
Fenton became Senator Conkling's colleague. In 
Chapter XVI. it was stated that the latter had 
chiefly controlled the State Convention of 1867. 
During his two terms as Governor (i 865-1 869) Mr. 

Fenton had secured a strong personal following, 

316 



SENA TOR FEN TON. 3 1 7 

and was to some extent a rival to Mr. Conkling 
as candidate for leadership in the Empire State ; 
but it is not too much to say that the subject of 
this memoir, without federal or State patronage, 
soon controlled the Republicans of New York. 

Senator Fenton first sought, and obtained, the 
ear of the new President, who conferred upon his 
friends the most desirable offices in the State. He 
was a man of plausible address and an adept in 
political management. He claimed credit for 
every appointment regarding New York, although 
in some cases he had not, strictly speaking, sug- 
gested the name of the appointee. On the other 
hand, Senator Conkling made no efforts to obtain 
" recoo-nition." He lived in a sort of dignified 
retirement, and seemed to act upon the principle 
that "all things come to those who wait." A 
friend familiarly told him that ''his colleague 
would pick all the cherries off the tree " unless he 
hastened to see the President. In common with 
some other Republican Senators, he did not under- 
stand General Grant, who was, of course, with^ 
out experience in the civil service of the nation. 
For a full year matters remained /;/ statu quo. 

At this time all of the Southern States were not 
reconstructed, and during Grant's first term the 
famous fifteenth amendment to the Constitution 
of the United States was ratified. For several 



3l8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

years the President and Congress, sustained by 
the people at every election, struggled with the 
rebellious South for the restoration of order and 
the execution of the laws enacted to enforce the 
new constitutional guarantees. 

Mr. Conkling, as chairman of the Committee on 
the Revision of the Laws, and on the floor of the 
Senate, greatly aided the new Administration. 
The Judiciary Committee (of which he was a 
member) reported March 25, 1869, a bill amend- 
ing the tenure of office act of 1867. The main 
feature of it was that the President was empowered 
to remove, without giving reasons, Cabinet and 
other civil officers during the session, subject to 
the action of the Senate, provided the Senate 
should fill the vacancies; and that during the re- 
cess the President could suspend and appoint to 
office until the end of the next session. 

It is worthy of remark that Mr. Fenton, under 
instructions of the New York Legislature, favored 
the repeal of the tenure of office act, while Mr. 
Conkling disregarded the dictates of a body that 
did not elect him. This extra session of the 
Senate lasted but a few weeks, and just before 
adjournment he did a good service in defeating 
the measure for the extension of an old land grant 
to the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad Com- 
pany. He showed that it was a wanton waste of 



A RAILROAD ACCIDENT CASE. 



19 



the public domain for the benefit of two Canadian 
speculators. 

It was an " off " year in politics. There was no 
State campaign in the autumn; and Senator Conk- 
ling" devoted the long recess to rest and occasional 
legal practice. 

In November, 1869, a very important suit for 
damages was tried at Utica. It was brought by 
Norman T. Smith against the New York Central 
Railroad Company, for injuries received while 
serving as engineer of a special train running 
from Syracuse to Albany. The plaintiff was act- 
ing as pilot to the regular engineer. A party of 
railway officials (the treasurer, counsel, superin- 
tendent and several directors) who were on the 
special train wished to reach Utica in time to par- 
take of a sumptuous repast prepared for them at 
Bagg's Hotel. The engineer was told to hurry, 
and the train rushed along at the rate of sixty 
miles an hour. When Oriskany, a station four 
miles from Utica was reached, a gravel train go- 
ing in the same direction was perceived, and al- 
though the plaintiff whistled " Down brakes ! " so 
great was the speed of the special train that, be- 
fore a stop could be made, it ran into the other. 
The plaintiff was severely injured, and, through 
Senator Conkling as his counsel, sued the com- 
pany for $50,000. On reaching the curve the 



320 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

pilot engineer had not looked at the track to warn 
his associate, and hence the defence was contribu- 
tory negligence. The Hon. Francis Kernan and 
the late J. Thomas Spriggs appeared for the rail- 
road company. 

The trial created great public interest, and the 
court-room was packed with spectators. A recess 
was taken to enable the jury to visit the place of 
the accident in company with a court officer. 
Dr. W. H. Watson acted as a medical expert for 
the plaintiff, and Mr. Conkling examined him with 
as much skill as he displayed in the medical cross- 
examination at the famous Budge trial. 

The counsel for the defendant expected a non- 
suit. They were much disappointed when the 
motion was denied, and it was said that a similar 
case had never been submitted to a jury in 
Oneida County. Many witnesses, including di- 
rectors and a large number of engineers, testified 
for the company. On cross-examination, however, 
Mr. Conkling confused the engineers, making some 
contradict themselves. 

After the evidence had been taken Mr, Kernan 
addressed the jury, closing with an appeal to dis- 
abuse their minds of the common prejudice 
against corporations. Senator Conkling then for 
two hours summed up with great effect. With 
much ingenuity he turned every particle of testi- 



HE WINS A LARGE VERDICT. 3 2 I 

mony to his advantage, and criticised the heart- 
less directors. Some wore diamonds, and com- 
menting upon this he said, in substance: "In 
eternity the pebbles upon the grave of poor Smith 
(the plaintiff) will shine as brightly as do the dia- 
monds upon the bosoms of the directors." At 
the time of the accident, cards and champagne 
had been found in the private car; and Senator 
Conkling, in speaking of directors playing poker 
and drinking while the train was rushing along, 
used the incident to the benefit of his client. 

The jury were intelligent men, and with his 
persuasive eloquence Senator Conkling carried 
them away. After a brief retirement they ren- 
dered a verdict of $18,000 — which, up to that time, 
is said to have been the largest in railroad accident 
cases. An appeal was taken to the general term 
of the Supreme Court, but the defendant, before 
argument, compromised by giving the plaintiff 
$10,000 in cash, paying Mr. Conkling's fee and the 
costs. 

When the counsel of the railroad company ap- 
pealed from the judgment entered upon the ver- 
dict, the late Cornelius Vanderbilt, then president 
of the company, is reported to have said, " Pay 
the amount of the verdict, for if Conkling tries 
this case again he may make it $50,000." Indeed, 
it was a common saying throughout Oneida 



322 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING 



County that " the railroad companies don't Hke 
Roscoe ConkUng." 

This case is one of the most famous that the 
Senator ever tried before a jury, and even to this 
day it is often discussed by lawyers in Central 
New York. At a meeting of the bar of Utica 
on the day of Mr. Conkling's funeral, ex-Judge 
W. J. Bacon, referring to this trial, spoke of Mr. 
Conkling's powerful summing up and gave a 
brief quotation from one of his utterances. 

The regular session of the Forty-first Congress 
began in December; and the first important 
topic for consideration was the reconstruction of 
Georgia. Mr. Conkling of course engaged in the 
debate of a subject to which he had for the last 
four years given special attention. Several days 
later he spoke at length upon the bill to provide 
for taking the ninth census of the United States. 
The debate upon this measure lasted till the month 
of May, when Mr. Conkling was put upon the 
Conference Committee as one of the three man- 
agers on the part of the Senate. 

In February he discussed the franking privilege, 
and on the anniversary of the birthday of Wash- 
ington he made a stirring speech in opposition to 
the resolutions of the Legislature of the State of 
New York repealing and rescinding the resolution 
adopted by a preceding Legislature ratifying the 



THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT. 323 

fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the 
United States. 

The Legislature of 1870 was the first Democratic 
Legislature that had been elected in New York 
since the beginning of the war of the Rebellion. 
The Democrats knew that the negroes would 
generally vote the Republican ticket ; hence the 
party which controlled the Legislature tried to 
reverse the action of the State of New York by 
revoking the resolution assenting to the amend- 
ment of the national Constitution. The Senator's 
speech was based upon his remarks made January 
12, when presenting the concurrent resolution of 
the Legislature. He then said, in substance : 

* * * In presenting this transcript of proceedings I dis- 
charge a distasteful duty. I avow my regret that a record of ac- 
tion so hasty, so ill-advised and so nugatory should come here at 
all, and my greater regret that it should come from the State of 
New York. It carries its own refutation on its face. Its own re- 
citals cancel it because they show that New York's approval of 
the great act of equality which temporary majorities seek to de- 
stroy has passed forever beyond their reach. 

Mr. Conkling, as chairman of the Committee on 
the Revision of the Laws, was directed to report 
it to the Senate with the recommendation that 
the consideration of the resolution of the Legisla- 
ture of New York be indefinitely postponed. 

He regarded this resolution as such a blot 
upon the fair fame of New York that he spoke 



/ 



324 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

until the subject was exhausted. It was a legal 
argument that will not bear condensation, so it is 
here omitted. A few of the more eloquent pas- 
sages will be found in our chapter on " Oratory." 

This was the first long speech made by Mr. 
Conkling in the open sessions of the Senate. It 
was highly spoken of by the Washington corre-- 
spondents of both Democratic and RepubUcan 
newspapers in the city of New York. To sum up 
the several articles, we may say that the speech 
created a great sensation. When he began, some 
slight disposition was evinced to occupy time in 
trifling. Thereupon several of the oldest and 
ablest Senators united in the expression of a wish 
that no obstacle would be thrown in the way of 
Mr. Conkling. He was thus paid a rare compli- 
ment, for it was a very unusual occurrence either 
in the Senate or House. The speech was listened 
to with the closest attention, and his argument 
was conceded to be most logical and convincing. 
When he concluded, three-fourths of the Senators 
present crowded about his seat and warmly 
tendered their congratulations. 

In the same month (February), when Senator 
Sumner was advocating the House Census bill, 
Mr. Conkling attacked him with a sally of sarcasm 
and ridicule. To test the sense of the Senate, Mr. 
Conkling moved to lay on the table the House 



SENATOR SUMNER CRITICISED. 325 

bill, which proceeding would carry with it all the 
pending amendments. The motion was carried 
by forty-six yeas to nine nays. Thereupon Senator 
Sumner, smarting at the unmerciful "scoring" to 
which Senator Conkling had subjected him, re- 
signed his position on the Committee on the 
Revision of the Laws. 

The tilt between these two Senators was widely 
discussed by the press of New York. The Com- 
mercial Advertiser, of Buffalo, closed a long edi- 
torial with the verse — 

Another's sword had laid him low, 
Another's and another's ; 
And every hand that dealt the blow — 
Ah me ! it was a brother's. 

Mr. Conkling's next important appearance in the 
Senate was in the debate upon the Funding bill, 
March 9 and 10, 1870. In favoring the measure, 
he argued that there was no precedent for making 
bonds payable abroad in the currency of any for- 
eign nation, and objected to the section to estab- 
lish agencies in Europe to pay the interest on the 
obligations of the republic. In the latter part of 
the session he argued in favor of the bill to reduce 
internal taxes and for other purposes. 

The nomination of Thomas Murphy as Collector 
at New York in the spring of 1870 occasioned a 
warm Senatorial struggle, w^hich ended Mr. Fen- 



326 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

ton's influence with General Grant. Although not 
appointed at Mr. Conkling's solicitation, he urged 
the confirmation of Mr. Murpliy. A bitter contest 
occurred in the executive session, which is briefly 
described in our chapter on " Oratory." 

After a long debate, Mr. Murphy was confirmed 
with but three negative votes (forty-eight to three), 
Senators Sumner and Fowler voting with Mr. Fen- 
ton. This was in July, 1870. The result of this dif- 
ference between Senators Fenton and Conkling 
was widely discussed in the press of New York. 
It was called a " quarrel," and the organs of each 
faction, of course, praised their leaders. It is un- 
necessary to say that Mr. Conkling's course was 
simply a vindication of General Grant, after he 
had lost confidence in Mr. Fenton, for reasons 
which need not be here discussed. Henceforth Mr. 
Conkling was, excepting perhaps Mr. Morton, of 
Indiana, more influential with the Administration 
than any other Senator. 

Early in August, 1870, the Republican State 
Committee met at Saratoga, and at the same time 
a conference of leaders took place. Among those 
present were Horace Greeley, Alonzo B. Cornell, 
General G. H. Sharpe, Richard Crowley, Thomas 
Murphy, E. D. Webster, Sinclair Tousey and Sen- 
ators Fenton and Conkling. The last named re- 
ceived a serenade and responded at some length. 



S YMPA TH Y FOR GERM A NY. 327 

He commended the President by saying, " Such 
stewardship deserves and will receive the pubUc 
approbation." In expressing sympathy for the 
Germans in the Franco-Prussian War he remarked : 

War has gone from us — its bloody shadow falls on France — 
its tramp rocks thrones and kings are sea-sick now. Perhaps war 
has gone with avenging hand to smite the sick man who domi- 
nates the land of Lafayette— perhaps war strikes the hour for the 
Emperor who plotted and schemed against us in the day of our 
trial. 

This reference by one of the leaders of the Re- 
publican party, holding Louis Napoleon as an ally 
of the South during the Civil War, provoked much 
comment in the press. 

God grant [said Mr. Conkling] that no harm may come to Ger- 
many! Germany sympathized with us, the sons of Germany fought 
for us, and cheers of victory went up in the German tongue from 
the burning battle-fields of our Rebellion. Germany's Constitution 
is like ours; Prussia believes, as we do, in education for all, and 
Republicans everywhere join me in -this hope that no harm is in 
store for Germany. 

In Stating that the mission of the Republican 
party was not yet fulfilled, that it must continue 
to fio-ht for a fair ballot and an honest count, he 
significantly remarked : 

We have at last an act of Congress under which an election 
may once more be held in the city of New York; a law seeking 
to substitute a fair election for that scandalous farce which has so 
often been enacted on election-days. The provisions I speak of 
will call into being inspectors to watch the registry, the vote, and, 
above all, the count, and the marshal is empowered to preserve 



328 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

order and safety at the polls. With a fair election and votes 
fairly counted, we need only conciliation and unity among our- 
selves, and then action, earnest action, and New York will pro- 
nounce for the Republican party and the administration of General 
Grant. To this end let us all work! 

During the campaign of 1870 General Grant 
wrote the following, which explains itself : 

Long Branch, N. J., August 22, 1870. 

Dear Senator : I have just been shown a despatch from you to 
Mr. Cornell, stating that you could not well meet me in New York 
City to-morrow, and expressing surprise rather that I wanted to 
see you. Before I started West, two weeks ago, I stated to Mr. 
Murphy and one or two others that I should like to meet you, 
and would try to do so on my return. Hence the letter to you 
from Mr. Cornell. I start in the morning for Newport, to remain 
there until Friday evening. On Saturday I shall reach West Point, 
where I will remain until Tuesday, the 29th inst., and then return 
here. I should like very much to meet you before the meeting 
of the State Convention, and, in the meantime, express the hope 
that you will go as a delegate. Should I not meet you I will 
write you a letter, specially if you should be a delegate, express- 
ive of my views as to the Gubernatorial nomination. It was on 
this subject I wanted to consult more than advise with you. New 
York, the largest, is certainly the most important State to secure 
a fair election in, and to secure to the Republican party, if it is 
right. If it is not right, a majority of the legal voters are the ones 
so to declare. The proper nominations should be made to test 
the strength of parties. May I expect to meet you either at West 
Point on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday next ? 

Yours truly, U. S. Grant. 

Hon. RoscoE Conk ling, Utica, N. Y. 

The Republican State Convention met at Sara- 
toga, September 7, 1870. It was the scene of an 
animated contest between the followers of Senator 



MR. WOODFORD NOMINATED FOR GOVERNOR. 



329 



Fenton and those of Senator Conkling. The two 
Senators were delegates. The supporters of Mr. 
Conkhng had a clear majority and elected George 
William Curtis temporary chairman. The State 
ticket placed in nomination was headed by Stew- 
art L. Woodford as the candidate for Governor. 
From the accession of Mr. Fenton to the Gover- 
norship in 1865, his friends had,without serious con- 
troversy, controlled the State Committee. Many 
changes were then effected ; the friends of Mr. 
Conkling obtained about two-thirds of its mem- 
bers and Alonzo B. Cornell was elected chairman. 

The great impediment to the purposes of the new 
Committee existed in the Republican organization 
in the city of New York. This Committee had 
been constituted years before to assure the ascen- 
dancy of Governor Fenton, who was accused of 
having a secret understanding with the Democratic 
leaders. 

Many of its officers were holding municipal posi- 
tions under an arrangement with Tammany Hall, 
then under the leadership of the notorious William 
M. Tweed. More than seventy-five per cent, of 
the members of the Republican Central Commit- 
tee were Fenton men. Under an investioation 
directed by Mr. Cornell, it was shown that a clear 
majority of the chairmen, secretaries and inspect- 
ors of the Republican district organizations held 



330 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

municipal appointments, many of which were sine- 
cures. 

It was apprehended that the defeated faction 
would secretly oppose the State ticket. The 
threat had been made, several months previous- 
ly, to avenge at the polls the removal of Moses 
H. Grinnell and the appointment of Thomas 
Murphy as Collector of the Port. With treason 
in the ranks of the party, Senator Conkling en- 
tered the canvass and made a series of speeches 
in the principal cities of the State. He began at 
Utica on the fourth of October, where he was 
chosen as chairman of a mass meeting at Me- 
chanics' Hall. 

In his speech at Washington Hall, Rochester, 
October i8. Senator Conkling spoke of the sec- 
tions of the national naturalization law, which he 
drew up himself, and which gave the general Gov- 
ernment the power to appoint supervisors of elec- 
tions. This enactment also gave to the United 
States marshals the power to prevent all violations 
of its provisions. He further charged that it was 
not now proposed to overturn this law and resort to 
mob violence. On the contrary he had only to say 
that if the statute were not already broad enough, 
it would hereafter be enlarged so as to crush all 
piracies and all pirates of the ballot-boxes. " We 
are going, at this election," said he, "to have a 



SPEECH UPON THE CANAL POLICY. 33 1 

fair vote and a fair count in New York City." 
He next called attention to the fact that the Ad- 
ministration had established economy, so that the 
Governmental expenditures were less now than 
they had ever been since the days of Andrew 
Jackson. A saving- had been effected in the ex- 
penses during the eighteen months of Grant's ad- 
ministration of $170,000,000 as compared with the 
expenditures of the previous eighteen months. 
Internal taxes and the revenue tariff had been 
vastly reduced. 

His next appearance was at Seneca Falls, and 
on the following day (October 20) he spoke at 
St. James's Hall, Buffalo, devoting himself chiefly 
to the canal policy of the party. 

This speech upon the canal policy was a formu- 
lary of the creed of the Republican party which 
was long adhered to in the State. After address- 
ing large assemblages at Lockport, Binghamton 
and Corning, Mr. Conkling spoke at the Cooper 
Institute, New York, November 3. The great hall 
was crowded, but the hearers were not all friendly. 
Senator Conkling was, without provocation, several 
times interrupted by persons who had come to dis- 
turb the meeting. The State ticket was defeated, 
as was believed, by treachery. 

When the third session of the Forty-first Con- 
gress commenced in December, the chief topic was 



332 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the treaty of San Doming-o. Several Republican 
Senators had assailed the Administration. Mr. 
Conkling vindicated the President in the measures 
taken for the annexation of that island. When the 
joint resolution passed the Senate (December 21, 
1870) authorizing" the appointment of three com- 
missioners to visit and report upon the republic 
of Dominica, Mr. Conkling- was one of the thirty- 
two voting" for it. Only nine negative votes were 
given, four of which were by Democrats. 

In the campaign of 1872 Senator Conkling made 
an unanswerable defence of the course of Presi- 
dent Grant regarding the San Domingo question. 
Indeed, he was then familiarly called " the War- 
wick of the Administration." 

He had no patience with the opposition of Sen- 
ators Sumner, Trumbull and Schurz toward Gen- 
eral Grant. He was convinced that they had 
changed their sentiments through personal rea- 
sons. As illustrations of his constant support of 
the Grant administration, we shall refer to two 
speeches which he delivered, the one upon the 
" One-Term Dogma," the other referring to the 
sale of arms to France by American merchants. 
We shall also give extracts from his greatest cam- 
paign speech, on July 23, 1872. Contrary to his 
practice, he then indulged in personalities. This 
he considered necessary to do on account of 



A FLATTERING OFFER. 



the malignant attacks on Preside^nt Grant by 
former professed friends. 

In the winter of the years 1870-1871 Senator 
ConkHng's devotion to the RepubHcan party was 
thoroughly tested, and he acted with a spirit of 
chivalry which deserves to be remembered. At 
that time the " Tammany ring " was at the height 
of its power, and after the autumnal election the 
Repubhcan cause in the State seemed hopelessly 
lost. Senator Conkling's own political career was, 
apparently, about to close. He confidentially 
told his friends that he did not expect a re-election. 
If the Tweed regime continued, the Republican as- 
cendancy was at an end in New York and a Demo- 
crat would soon succeed him in the Senate. At 
this very time he was offered a legal partnership in 
the city of New Yorky with a guarantee of $50,000 
a year — an offer most flattering to his professional 
pride and most advantageous to his personal in- 
terests. To a man whose political future appeared 
dark, it was very tempting. If he should accept 
this lucrative proposal, it would assure ample pro- 
vision for his family. To decline it might be to 
sacrifice himself and continue a futile contest, with 
defeat almost certain. Following the advice of 
old Republican friends, he refused the offer. In the 
approaching State campaign, buckling on his armor 
for a long and bitter fight, he, in concert with oth- 



334 ^^^^ "^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

ers, set in operation that political work which re- 
stored the supremacy of the RepubHcan party in 
the State of New York. 

In January, 1871, the press of New York was 
occupied with discussion of the difference between 
the two Senators. The friends of Mr. Fenton ac- 
cused his former colleague of having persuaded the 
President to appoint his own followers to office. 
The author has reason to believe that Senator Conk- 
ling had not at that time requested a single office 
from General Grant. At this juncture many articles 
appeared in the Republican press of New York, to 
the effect that unity and harmony must be secured, 
or defeat in the autumn would be certain. Mean- 
while the reorganization of the Republican City 
Committee was under way. The " Tammany Re- 
publicans " were summarily dropped from the 
new Republican organization of the city of New 
York. To this movement General Grant lent the 
whole power of his Administration. He clearly 
saw that, so long as their influence directed the 
counsels of the party, there could be no hope of 
success. 

The Republican State Committee had ordered 
a complete reorganization of the local party ma- 
chinery. This radical step was, of course, strongly 
opposed by the Fenton faction, and the New York 
Tribu7ie bitterly assailed Mr. Cornell, the chair- 



THE STATE COMMITTEE IS REORGANIZED. 335 

man, for this action. The State Committee ap- 
pointed Horace Greeley and Jackson S. Schultz, 
then President of the Union League Club, com- 
missioners, with full and absolute power to create 
a new local organization. Mr. Greeley declined to 
serve, whereupon William Orton was named as 
his substitute. Messrs. Schultz and Orton pro- 
ceeded with the work of reorganization. 

Mr. Greeley then accepted the chairmanship of 
the old General Committee, which now contested 
the right of the State Committee to order a re- 
organization, as an act without precedent in the 
history of the party. Two rival organizations now 
claimed to be the official representatives of the 
Republican party in the city of New York. 

The famous treaty of Washington, the work of 
the joint commission, was approved by the Senate 
in the spring of 1871. The particulars of the treaty 
were divulged soon afterward by two zealous 
newspaper correspondents. Senators Carpenter 
and Conkling at once moved that these contuma- 
cious correspondents be imprisoned for two days 
as a punishment for violation of rules of the Sen- 
ate. The two Senators were then roundly abused 
by the press, and they received the sobriquet of 
" Common Jailers " Conkling and Carpenter. 

Early in July, 1871, Senator Conkling visited 
the President at Long Branch, A plan of action 



336 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

for the coming campaign in New York was agreed 
upon. That summer ex-Senator E. D. Morgan 
came to the support of the Administration. 

In the following letter Senator Conkling defined 
his position : 

Utica, N Y., Aug. 26, 1871. 

My Dear Sir: I wish I could run over to Newport and visit 
you, but I must relinquish the pleasure for this year. The riew 
you take of political matters is my view also. Every sincere Re- 
publican can and must take hold heartily now, for a long pull, a 
strong pull and a pull all together. 

4f- * * * * -x- * 

Referring to your remarks about the approaching Presidential 
canvass, I am, as you know, heartily for General Grant. This 
would be my position, even without my strong regard for him, 
and confidence in him personally. He has made a better Presi- 
dent than you and I, when we voted for him, had any right to ex- 
pect ; and he is a better President every day than he was the day 
before. He has given the country the best practical administra- 
tion, in many respects, we have had for a quarter of a century, and 
the people know it. Those who hold the securities of the country, 
and property holders in general, dare not run the risk of a Demo- 
cratic President now; they want no swapping of horses at this 
time. With General Grant as the candidate, our success is as- 
sured ; with any other candidate, success is not certain ; and 
hence the renomination and re-election of General Grant seem to 
me a foregone conclusion. 

In the State of New York, more than ailywhere else, the path 
of Republicans appears plain and their duty urgent. Here is the 
greatest free State in Christendom given over to rascals — a prey 
to a horde of thieves, who, infesting our chief city, disgrace hu- 
manity and mildew the Commonwealth by their pestilential prof- 
ligacy. These plunderers have seized upon the State Govern- 
ment, the Legislature and all the municipal agencies of the city 
of New York ; and hitherto they have tampered with our party 



LE TTER TO JOHN A . GRJS WOLD . 337 

organizations also, debauching and controlling them. The ques- 
tion facing us is, whether this degrading, flagitious sway shall 
cease, or be perpetuated and fortified anew. Every one knows 
that the first step toward remedy and reform is to nominate the 
best men in the Republican party, and elect them to the Legisla- 
ture and to the executive offices of the State. And yet, men 
stand talking about federal patronage, and differences among 
leaders, and personal feeling between individuals, and the like. 
What have such things to do with the duty of this hour? What do 
the people care about them — what should they care ? Of what 
public consequence are the personal aims and objects and mis- 
haps of individuals ? For one, if I know how, by act or omission, 
I have given just offence to any man, I ought to go, and will go, 
and make any amend m my power ; all who know you, know you 
would do likewise. But I insist that all who are in earnest should 
go to work and keep at work. It is high time to be done with 
unprofitable things signifying nothing, and productive only of 
harm. The best way to do a thing is to do it. Talking may 
be good, but talking about what we are willing to do and what 
might be done, when there is but one straightforward thing to do, 
is not near so likely to help the Republican party as to take right 
hold honestly and squarely, as men should who believe in what 
they are about, and mean it. 

We shall all be together in redeeming the State, I hope, and 
many good men will help who never helped us before. 

This long hurried letter is a poor requital for your kind invita- 
tion, and a poor substitute for the talk we might have had in your 
"cottage by the sea." Your friend, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Hon. John A. Griswold, Newport, R. I. 



22 



I87I. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE SYRACUSE CONVENTION AND THE STATE CAMPAIGN. 

'T^HE problem of reorganization was now to be 
determined. The Republican State Con^ 
vention for 187 1 assembled at Syracuse Septem- 
ber 27. The two factions of the city of New York 
elected full delegations, each claiming to be the 
lawful representatives. There had been a sharp 
conflict in the counties of the State, the issue 
being the approval of the action of the State 
Committee in the metropolis. There was also a 
large attendance of Republicans who were not 
delegates. For days before the meeting of the 
Convention the hotels of Syracuse were thronged 
with anxious and excited men, vehemently dis- 
cussing its probable action. Never, perhaps, had 
there assembled a political convention in the 
State at which existed so much personal bit- 
terness. 

The most prominent Republicans had been 
chosen as delegates. Statesmen, merchants and 

professional men were present, and shared with 

338 



THE SYRACUSE CONVENTION. 339 

farmers and mechanics their earnest zeal for the 
welfare of their party and country. 

The Convention met at the Wieting Hall. So 
great was the number present that it had been 
found necessary to restrict admittance to the floor. 
Delegates, alternates and contestants were alike 
supplied with tickets, and the public were ad- 
mitted to the galleries without discrimmation. 
The hall was crowded to the dome. 

At twelve o'clock Alonzo B. Cornell, chairman 
of the State Committee, called the Convention to 
order. General George H. Sharpe immediately 
nominated the Hon. Andrew D. White for tempo- 
rary chairman ; General Edwin A. Merritt also 
proposed the name of Chauncey M. Depew. The 
Chair declared him out of order, as Mr. Depew 
was not a delegfate to the Convention. Colonel 
Anson S. Wood immediately nominated G. Hilton 
Scribner. The scene which followed baffles de^ 
scription ; at one time, members of the rival dele- 
gations from New York attempted to gain the 
platform, threatening to take possession by force. 
Chairman Cornell now established his reputation 
as an able and impartial presiding officer and 
speedily restored order. Two hours were consum- 
ed in calling the roll of the Convention. As Secre- 
tary L. L. Doty announced the county of New 
York, the hall resounded with points of order. 



340 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The Chair, however, decided that neither delega- 
tion was entitled to vote, and that their credentials 
should be referred to the Committee on Contested 
Seats when it should be appointed. The crisis was 
safely passed, and the sagacious action of Chairman 
Cornell made the delegates of the other fifty-nine 
counties virtually arbiters of the entire controversy. 

The vote for temporary chairman was finally 
announced as follows : Whole number of votes, 
347: for Andrew D. White, 188; for G. Hilton 
Scribner, 159. 

The election of Mr. White, on motion of Waldo 
Hutchins, was made unanimous, and the Conven- 
tion immediately proceeded to the transaction of 
business. 

The Committee on Credentials made two reports. 
The majority approved and ratified the new organi- 
zation in New York, but admitted both sets of del- 
egates to seats. The minority denied the author- 
ity of the State Committee to interfere with the 
existing organization, repudiated its action, and 
reported in favor of the delegates chosen under 
the authority of the old General Committee. A 
warm debate immediately ensued and the result 
was uncertain. Finally the Hon. Hamilton Ward 
offered a substitute for both reports, to the effect 
that the two delegations should be admitted, each 
with half the vote of the county, and that the Con- 



A REMARKABLE SPEECH. 34 1 

vention take measures to unite and harmonize the 
two organizations. The other delegates, weary of 
the controversy, were ready to accept so easy a 
method to determine the matter. The question 
was demanded by men on every side. The pre- 
siding officer paused for a moment. The Conven- 
tion was restless, and it appeared certain that the 
Fenton men would win the conflict. Mr. White 
was about to speak, when a voice from the rear of 
the hall, slow, measured, penetrating, till every 
man seemed to quiver, arrested his attention. 

" Mr. President," it said, " not yet the question ! " 
It was the voice of Roscoe Conkling. Such a 
speech, in its terms, its forcible eloquence, its 
overwhelming result, was perhaps never heard in a 
similar assemblage. 

Many of Senator Conkling's friends insist that 
this was one of his most remarkable speeches. It 
was an unpremeditated effort. The best report ex- 
tant was published in the Syracuse Daily Standard 
September 28, 1871, from which the following 

paragraphs are copied : 

******* 
Mr. President, let me call your attention for one moment to 
some of the events in the presence of which we stand. A horde 
of ballot-box pirates and robbers have clutched by the throat the 
greatest city of the Western world. A horde of pirates, whose 
firm-name is Tammany Hall, I stand here to say, is presenting in 
its own organization the most hideous spectacle in modern history, 
has disbanded, tampered with, and to a large part controlled that 



342 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING, 

glorious organization which is the brightest in the annals of politi- 
cal parties. [Applause.] 

Now, Mr. President, does any member of this Convention who 
differs with me say that I go too far when I affirm, as the New 
York Tribune has affirmed, in repeated instances, of which I have 
extracts before me, that W. M. Tweed and the other men who 
have disgraced us before the civilized world have tampered with, 
controlled and debauched the Republican organization in the city 
of New York ? [Applause.] 

Mr. President, if any member of this Convention denies that 
proposition, speak, for him I have offended. [Several voices : " I 
deny it."] Ah, Mr. President, I am thankful for that denial; I 
put it as the touch-stone of this Convention, because I knew the 
logic of these gentlemen would compel them to deny it. [Ap- 
plause and laughter.] Mr. President, when I hear any man, 
although he may be a friend of mine, deny that altogether, my 
answer to him is — it is too late. The fact has passed into the 
judgment of recorded history. 



Now, Mr. President, if the election were a year off, or even 
six months, I could see some safety in this; but do Republicans 
remember that hardly more than a month is to elapse before we 
are to meet Tammany and the Democracy in a death-grapple for 
the mastery, and that in that grapple Tammany is to go down? 
[Applause.] Do they remember, I say, that we have but a month 
to complete the prostration of this common foe ? If they do, is it 
proposed that when such men as Jackson S. Schultz, Mr. Orton, 
and others who aid them, have given weeks and months to this 
work, that it is to be thrown away, and that we are going to 
attempt in four weeks to do it all over again dc mn'o ? Why, Mr. 
President, I submit that everybody must see that we must either 
go through this campaign with a double-headed and divided or- 
ganization, or we must make haste to close up the ranks and unite 
in one body, welded together, the whole Republican party of New 
York against a common foe. [Applause.] 

******* 
Now, Mr. President, all I ask is that when this Committee has 



HE CENSURES TAMMANY HALL. 343 

matured carefully a plan which will consolidate and unify the Re- 
publican masses in the city of New York, we shall take it in fair- 
ness. Put these two delegations precisely upon a par, and then 
separate, knowing that when, three or four months hence, the State 
Convention is called to send delegates to the National Convention, 
we shall not be grieved and mortified by the spectacle of double 
delegations coming here to send a divided delegation to the na- 
tional convention, in order to parade our discussions there. 

Mr. Chairman, I have spoken with some earnestness. Before 
I take my seat, I beg to say that I have spoken with a feeling of 
the utmost kindness toward every member of this Convention. 
There is no gentleman in either organization with whom I cannot 
stand, with pleasure, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, and go 
forward in the execution of the party purposes and the party will. 
[Applause.] I was instructed by my constituents, as I believe 
were the other delegates from the county of Oneida, to vote in 
favor of the reorganization of the Republican party in the city of 
New York. I have come here, therefore, under instructions, and 
I supposed that I had gone to the very edge, in council, when I 
advised and requested my cherished friends, who did me the 
favor to consult with me, to provide for the admission of both sets 
of delegates, seeking nothing except that, when this Convention 
was over, this split would be at an end, and all the elements of 
Republicanism in the city of New York would come into the or- 
ganization — that he who came at the eleventh hour upon the same 
terms as if he had borne the heat and burden of the day. All 
changes necessary or desired to be made in the chairmen of asso- 
ciations, in the inspectors of elections, and in the officers all 
around, so that everybody entering the organization now, may come 
in, upon what they use to call in Pennsylvania, in the oil regions, 
''upon the ground floor." I thought if that were established no 
complaint could be made. If I have erred, I have erred in the 
interests of harmony and magnanimity. And I err in the same 
way now, when I appeal to the gentleman on my right, who has 
served with me in more trying scenes than this, to allow us to 
take a fair and square vote upon the two reports of the Committee, 
to the end that we may have the sense of the Convention and pro- 
ceed to complete our labor. [Applause.] 



344 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The vote was then taken. The substitute was 
lost and the report of the majority adopted by an 
excess of forty votes. 

The Fenton delegates from New York then 
withdrew, and the Convention adjourned till morn- 
ing. It met at nine o'clock and nominated State 
officers. 

The State Committee was then announced. El- 
lis H. Roberts, of Oneida, reported the platform, 
which warmly approved the administration of 
Ulysses S. Grant, and condemned the " astounding 
revelations of fraud and corruption in the city of 
New York." 

After the adjournment Senator Conkling was 
called on, and delivered an address, in which he 
was frequently interrupted with applause. He 
spoke chiefly of the greatness of the republic, and 
claimed as its lawful representative the Republi- 
can party. He referred to the withdrawal of the 
New York delegates, and said : " Here it was they 
belonged, and nowhere else." The first speech 
made by Mr. Conkling in the campaign of that 
year was at Albany, where he reviewed the na- 
tional and State politics of that year. We print 
an extract from his remarks m our chapter on " Ora- 
tory." He closed by a rigorous denial of the alle- 
gation that the President had accepted costly pres- 
ents during his term of office. 



HE MAKES CAMPAIGN SPEECHES. 345 

During October Senator Conkling spoke in 
Western and Central New York. He received in- 
vitations to address mass meetings in New York 
and Brooklyn, and in reply he wrote the following 
letter : 

Utica, October 23, 187 1. 

Gentlemen: — To speak to the honest, courageous citizens of 
New York, who believe as I do in the unity and destiny of the 
Republican party, would be a privilege and an honor which I re- 
luctantly forego. On the evening for which your ratification 
meeting is proposed, I am, however, to speak in another city, 
where no such array of orators will be as will gather at Cooper 
Institute. 

Assurances come to me that the Republicans of New York are 
to bury in oblivion differences which have occupied them too long, 
and which, bringing peril to our cause, are treason in the emer- 
gency before us. The meeting will, it is said, be a reunion of 
all Republicans who set principle and pure Government above per- 
sonal feeling, and hold the advancement of the party in its career 
of usefulness paramount to the exaltation or the overthrow of 
individual members. 

Rest assured that none more than myself can rejoice in a con- 
summation so wise, so patriotic and so plainly right. 

Since the hour of its formation, I have ever labored in the 
Republican party, never doubting the rights of humanity, and, 
therefore, never doubting the usefulness or success of the party 
which upheld them. Mistaken in some instances, it may have 
been; wronged sometimes by those it trusted, it has been; but its 
glory and its promise are immutable, in the fact that it has proved 
equal to the exigencies it has been required to confront. Just 
now a new duty is laid upon it. It is summoned to a great work 
of reformation in our own State. It is called upon to eradicate 
the most hideous and terrifymg conspiracy of plunderers and 
social destroyers of which we have any knowledge. 

For such a party, at such a juncture, signaled to go forward 
by an ennobling past, and beckoned by an imperiled future, to be 



346 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

baffled or detained by trivial bickerings is to arrest the uplifted arm 
of public justice and to cover the enemies of society with a shield. 
Rather let Republicans, not only, but Republicans and Democrats 
in the city of New York, unite in sinking minor contentions and 
in electing honest men of both parties to public trusts. Such a 
unity will be prolific of far-reaching good. It will call back to the 
duties of citizenship thousands who seem almost to have forgotten 
their stake in government and their obligations to it. Many dis- 
cerning persons, after looking for years at our great city, seeing 
multitudes of its best men, with faces habitually averted from 
public affairs, pass by on the other side, and abandon politics to 
others, have adopted the despairing theory that an urban popula- 
tion is unsuited to the maintenance of Republican institutions. 
This is the time to dispel this fatal apprehension. The gibbet on 
which official sin is now to forfeit its existence will do only a brief 
and vengeful office unless it awakens the consciences of those 
whose neglect left the door ungarded while thieves and vampires 
entered in. 

If the better elements of New York can be combined and 
stirred to activity, the election and the count of votes will not be 
such mockeries as in preceding years. In the actual presence of 
the intelligence and uprightness of a million people, the manipu- 
lators dare not do as they have done before. The assurance of 
a fair election in the metropolis will bring out overwhelming anti- 
Tammany majorities in the country. 

Last year I addressed many Republican meetings in different 
portions of the State, and everywhere the same obstacle was 
found. It was a settled belief that majorities sufficient to elect 
local tickets were all the case recjuired; that no matter what ma- 
jorities for the State ticket the rural districts might give, they 
would be falsely counted down on Manhattan Island. All assur- 
ances of reduced frauds in New York were overcome by counted 
statements, and 45,000 Republicans, who had voted at the guber- 
natorial election last before, did not vote at all. This year the 
same fear weighs upon our people, and nothing will do so much 
to insure the downfall of Tammany in the State as palpable indi- 
cations that the people of the city mean to have some approach 
to a fair vote and a fair count. 



REPUBLICAN SUCCESS. 347 

To achieve this, and to achieve all, the first and last need is 
concord and unity among Republicans, and afterward united 
action in the city between Republicans and all other sincere 
reformers wherever the emergency demands it. 

Trusting that the meeting will usher in an era of good feeling 
and of good works, I remain your obedient servant, 

ROSCOE CONKLING.* 

Charles S. Spencer, Esq., 

and others, Coitwiittee^ etc. 

The result of this campaign proved beyond all 
cavil that the Administration party was the genu- 
ine Republican organization in the Empire State, 
and that Senator Conkling was its leader. Thereto- 
fore he might have been regarded as the head of 
a faction — at least since 1869, when ex-Governor 
Fenton became his colleague. This election was 
an approval of the policy of President Grant and 
a rebuke to the corrupt methods of Tammany 
Hall, and the men who, by accepting its favors, 
dishonored themselves and their associates. 

* He also addressed, to the citizens of Brooklyn, a letter, which was 
duly published. 



N. 



January, 1872. 
CHAPTER XX. 

THE "ONE -TERM DOGMA." 

A T the second session of the Forty-second Con- 
gress, Senator Sumner submitted (Decem- 
ber 21, 1 871) an amendment to the Constitution, 
to the effect that no person who has once held the 
office of President shall be thereafter eligible to 
that office. This measure was of course aimed at 
General Grant; and Senator Conkling soon came 
to his defence in the speech entitled "The One- 
Term Dogma."* 

It may be claimed, fairly, for this speech that it 
takes rank with the best argumentative orations 
of the American Senate. 

The orations which relate to public affairs may 
be divided into three classes — those which belong 
to revolutionary periods ; those which belong to 

* To give the reader some idea of the time required to prepare this 
celebrated speech, the author may state that a skilled copyist worked ful- 
ly fifteen hours in transcribing it from the single copy in Mr. Conkling's 
scrap-book. Unlike other speeches, there are «fl duplicates of this one in 
Mr. Conkling's house. The biographer regrets very much that he has 
not space to publish the entire oration. Should he publish a second vol- 
ume of Senator Conkling's principal speeches and legal arguments, this 
speech will be there printed. 

348 



HIS BEST SPEECH UP TO THA T TIME, 349 

times of public peril ; and those which deal with 
questions of importance in times of comparative 
tranquillity. 

Mr. Conkling's speech on the One-Term Dogma 
belongs to the third class. In this field the scope 
of the orator is limited. There is but little occa- 
sion or opportunity for an appeal to the emotions, 
or to the sense of duty, or to the sentiment of 
patriotism. Under such circumstances, expediency 
is the warp of the discourse. There is no necessity 
for action, there is no peril in non-action, and 
there can be no appeal to the audience upon these 
grounds. When we consider that the discussion 
in the Senate was limited to the question of the 
eligibility of the President to a re-election, we are 
forced to the conclusion that Mr. Conkling's speech 
contains as much of argument, of illustration and 
of persuasive force as could have been furnished 
by any orator of the present age. 

The Senate having under consideration a pro- 
posed amendment to the Constitution, as follows: 

Article 

Section i. No person who has once held the office of Presi- 
dent of the United States shall be thereafter eligible to that office. 

Sec. 2. This amendment shall not take effect until after the 
fourth day of March, 1873. 

Mr. Conkling said: 

We have entered an era of reform — a change has been made in 
the civil service. It will, I trust, be real and useful. It will be 



350 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 



vain if it does not cure the chief evils it is meant to remedy. 
Place-hunting is one of the great industries of the nation; it is 
almost a mania. Public employment is set above private occu- 
pation, and this, though for the honest and the competent public 
employment is the poorest field of American exertion. Public 
agents and representatives have been hindered in their duties 
and their time taxed by applicants for office. 

* * * The President has been made the object of gross as- 
sault because he would not yield to demands, sometimes sordid 
and vile, touching "patronage;" and the purest public adminis- 
tration has been exposed to suspicion of abusing the appoint- 
ing power for personal ends. 

* ^f -Sfr * * * * 

The Senator from Massachusetts has been elected and re- 
elected to the Senate three times in succession, for six years each 
time. During his repeated terms there has been but one occa- 
sion before this when the proposition he now brings forward 
could not have been considered on its merits, without even the 
appearance of being aimed at any individual. 

When Mr. Lincoln's second nomination was approaching, such 
a proposition, had that time been selected for it, would no doubt 
have been regarded as a thrust at him. Excepting that one oc- 
casion, a year could hardly be found during the last thirty-nine 
years when the proposition might not have been canvassed with- 
out reflecting upon any one. From Jackson to Lincoln, neither 
party, except in one case, has renominated a President or seri- 
ously thought of doing so. 

The country will construe the proceeding with unerring dis- 
cernment. 

The advocates of the candidate at whom this bow is bended 
will derive encouragement from it. Desperate cases require des- 
perate remedies and heroic treatment. 

After all the depths and shoals of calumny have been sounded, 
after falsehood and vulgarity have been poured out till grossness 
itself is sated, after every weapon in the poisoned armory of 
rancor has been plied, after the resources of civilized and of 
savage warfare have been exhausted, what must be the hold of 
a candidate on the affections and respect of his countrymen 



MR. LINCOLN'S ADMINISTRATION 



351 



when the last chance of his overthrow is by constitutional 
amendment ? 

He is not the first magistrate who has undergone persecution 
in which hatred, jealousy and baffled intrigue have mingled their 
gall in bitter cruelty. The penalties he pays have been paid by 
the fearless and upright ^who have gone before him, and paid, as 
he pays them, for vindicating the independence and purity of his 
great office. 

Injustice is heaped upon him and on those who sustain him. 
To espouse him is to incur the vengeance and the libels of the 
most virulent newspapers in the land. Presses and demagogues 
vie with each other in assaults upon him; but this is the old story, 
and he is secure, as no predecessor for forty years has been secure, 
against detraction and defeat. 

Forty years ago, Senate and country rang with a higher din than 
we now hear. Then, as now, a re-election was pending, and the 
President was the object of attack. Then, as now, both parties 
furnished the assailants. Then, as now, bitterness and injustice, 
ruled the hour. Then giants dealt the blows, and stout were the 
bosses of his buckler who could stand against them. Then, as 
now, the waves of party and of faction dashed against a soldier 
and a patriot, but the people believed in Jackson, and the waves 
were shivered into sprays. 

Mr. Lincoln's administration also met with foul denunciation 
and envenomed defection. Who has forgotten the attitude then 
of men and presses who assail the President now ? But the man 
assailed was again one in whom the people believed, and editors, 
politicians and Senators were alike impotent. 

Compare the third year of Mr. Lincoln's administration with 
the third year now; compare General Jackson's third year with 
this; compare the third year of any administration since Wash- 
ington's, and in strength with the people, in usefulness and in 
good results, in just deserts, and in the certainty of its approval 
by the nation, this century has seen no administration so impreg- 
nable as this. Yet this time is chosen to launch an amendment 
to handcuff the people in choosing whom they please for President. 
******* 

Do not Senators, as well as Presidents, need to be delivered 



352 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING, 



from temptation? May not Senators, as well as Presidents, be 
tempted to scheme and intrigue and play the demagogue, and 
defame other departments of the Government, and neglect their 
duties, and employ patronage, and even worse means, all to secure 
a re-election or a still higher place ? 

Have not the aspirations of Senators to the Presidency been 
fruitful sources of mischief at other stages in our history ? 

Have not the passionate discords, unseemly contentions, cruel 
enmities, pernicious disturbances and bad legislation grown out 
of the ambition of members of one or the other House of Con- 
gress ? 

The worst broils in our politics have festered in Congress; and 
who does not know their cause ? 

Think of the wrong, the injustice, the false accusations and 
suspicions, the bad passions, the abuse of public interest, the 
needless, hurtful agitations, which would not have been if Sena- 
tors and Representatives could never have been candidates for 
the Presidency or candidates for re-election. 

History speaks no uncertain voice in this respect; and yet the 
Senate has been well said to be the altar, not the staircase, of 
Presidential hopes. Hecatombs of candidates have been offered 
up here, but none have gone hence to the Presidential chair. I 
call the attention of friends around me to this fact. 

4«- * -St * * * * 

The Senate breeds unhealthy candidates for the Presidency, 
but it breeds many lusty successful candidates for re-election to 
the Senate. Unless we amend the Constitution and prevent it, 
the time may come when scheming candidates will be breeded, can- 
didates who would use legislation, who would clutch at anything 
and stick at nothing, to re-elect themselves. Let us lay these 
things to heart, and not forget ourselves when casting about 

among the perils of second terms. 

****** * 

But the measure before us is not leveled at the unfit, nor at 
the doubtful, but at those most fit and most approved. Its aim 
and object is to exclude demonstrated fitness. It visits only 
tried capacity. 

In the name of civil service reform, we are asked to advise 



EFFECT OF THE AMENDMENT. 353 

the nation to tie its hands against ever availing itself of the ser- 
vices of that citizen who, having once been chosen President, has 
acquitted himself so well as to prove the wisdom of his choice, 
and to convince his countrymen that he is still the best and safest 
guardian of the trust. 

We are to disable nobody but the one man who, from time 
to time, may by actual trial be found most capable and acceptable. 

What would be thought of such a suggestion applied to the 
common affairs of life ? 

Yet this is the meaning and effect of the amendments. It 
must be idle and inoperative as to all Presidents who do not 
specially commend themselves to the people. It could be a bar 
only to those who must be crippled by law to prevent their reach- 
ing the Presidency again. 

It is a disability to be imposed on the people. It abridges 
the nation's right to choose whom it will for President; it does 
more; it seeks out the particular man the people would choose, 
and says they shall not choose him. It seeks out no man whom 
the people would not choose; it could never, even by accident, 
hit any man whom the people would not choose; its whole scope 
is to compel those to be left who otherwise would be taken. For 
madmen, such shackles might be fit; they might do for children, 
but it seems odd to try to put them on a free people fit to govern 
themselves. When people or States hold out their hands and 
ask Congress to put such manacles on them, the work will go 
more bravely on. 

We are reminded that a political party, now no more, declared 
in favor of electing its candidates but once. This was a resolu- 
tion in a party platform made for a campaign. A revenue or a 
protective tariff, a national bank, a sub-Treasury, the annexation 
of Texas, have also from time to time appeared on the eddying 
currents of party waves. Who ever thought of petrifying such 
things in the Constitution ? Party platforms and party measures 
are fleeting and changing; political parties themselves dissolve; 
but the Constitution remains. 

* * * Let us try the present question in this way. One 
argument is that the President will exert himself, and devote his 
time, during his first term, to be re-elected, and therefore it should 
23 



354 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

be made impossible for him to be re-elected. A criticism upon 
this argument is that it is no more true, relatively, of the one 
ofifice at which it is aimed, than of others, and yet its application 
to other offices is denied. But there is an answer to the argu- 
ment. The President will exert himself to be chosen a second 
time. How will he exert himself? Will he exert himself by 
neglecting and violating his duty ? Why should he ? Does the 
road to public favor lie in the direction of faithlessness in public 
trust? He is seen of all men, friends and foes; his acts and 
omissions are under the lenses of perpetual and hostile scrutiny. 
What, then, would seem to be his politic course, lifting no higher 
the motives of a Chief Magistrate emulous to continue in his 
place ? 

"Corruption wins not more than honesty." One would think 
that ambition to be re-chosen, and the possibility of gratifying it, 
would be a high incentive, prompting lofty and commanding exer- 
tion. The surest way to be President again is to be the best 
President. If this is so, how can the wish to exalt himself in pub- 
lic estimation depress his standard of action ? How can it fail to 
be a spur to good endeavor ? The truth of this argument lies 
deep in every human heart. Every soldier in the battle of life 
feels it. Be he lawyer, doctor, mechanic, or President, every 
man knows that doing well for those who employ him is the pass- 
port to confidence and promotion. 

* * * * -x- * * 

Between candidates, the odds are with him who has disap- 
pointed no one, and against him whose benefits are already dis- 
tributed, and who has disappointed several every time he has 
obliged one. 

But, again, is experience of no value in high place ? Other 
things being equal, is not he the best man for a place who is 
practiced in it? Is not an upright man better fitted to be Presi- 
dent the day he leaves than the day he reaches the Presidential 
chair? If he is, shall we throw away in advance, and for all emer- 
gencies, the benefit of tried rulers, because we may, some time or 
other, find one whose experience is weighed down by faults ? 

What was the standing explanation of the predominance of the 
South in the councils and affairs of the nation for so many years? 



ROTATION IN OFFICE. 



355 



It was that she continued her public men in place and did not 
change from man to man. Southern Senators and Representa- 
tives were returned again and again, and therefore, and thereby, 
they acquired the practice, the knowledge and the experience 
which made them overmatches for the new men who came, one 
after another, from the North. 

Yet the duties of a Senator or a Representative are not more 
hard or slow to learn than the duties of the President. In either 
place, more knowledge would be useful than mortal man was ever 
blessed with. 

I make no argument against rotation in office^far from it. 
The people will insist, and I think they should insist, that all who 
hold political office shall lay down their commissions at frequent 
intervals. If the man whose term expires has been faithful and 
useful, he may be elected or appointed again; but he must lay 
his commission at the feet of those who granted it. Thus the 
nation and the people of the States keep the staff in their own 
hands, and this is all that is needed. If, competing with all others, 
one who has already served in a place is again selected for it, no 
one need complain, but periodical expirations of public trusts 
will not be readily abandoned. 

This truth, if it be a truth, should not be overlooked in civil 
service reform. I believe any system will be stranded which 
attempts to keep incumbents in place for life, or for long periods, 
without re-election or reappointment. The judiciary have life ten- 
ures, and this is enough of life tenure in a republic of equal rights. 

* * -K- * * * -»■ 

The author of the amendment seems to have relied not so 
much on reason as on authority. His resolve is prefaced and 
ushered in by an array of noted names. 

We have, preambled before us, four Americans and one 
Frenchman who, operated upon by different motives and im- 
pelled by different occasions, have suggested ineligibility to second 
Presidential terms as a remedy for particular evils. It is an 
error to suppose that all those thus named expressed approval 
of such a provision as we have here without addition or qualifi- 
cation. General Jackson, for instance, coupled it with a six years* 
term. Be that as it may, much might be said of the influences, 



356 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the inconsistencies, the downright contradictions, which history 
records in connection with some of these declarations. It would 
be easy to impair the weight of much of this carefully gathered 
authority. It is chiefly valuable to prove how vastly the author- 
ity is the other way. These collected sayings show us that the 
"one-term principle" has from time to time been presented 
sharply to the public mind. Persuasive voices have summoned 
people and Congress to consider it. It has not slumbered in for- 
getfulness, but has been periodically canvassed at such times as 
its champions deemed most likely to invest it with interest. It 
has been more than once presented in each House of Congress, 
and usually coupled with assisting provisions. 

What has been its fate? Congress has never approved it. The 
nation has condemned it repeatedly. Fifteen Presidents have 
been elected, and nearly half of them have been re-elected. 
Death spared President Harrison but one month, and President 
Taylor but sixteen months. These two must be deducted from 
those in whose case the question of a second term could arise. 
President Grant, not having reached the end of his first term, is 
to be omitted also in the count. Thus we have twelve citizens 
raised to the Presidency by the votes of the people, and six of 
them elected a second time. 

Was this the action of the people, or did these Presidents, de- 
spite the people, usurp or snatch a second term? 

Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln, 
all were re-elected. Did the people re-elect them, or did the 
office-holders re-elect them ? Did these second-term Presidents 
outwit the people by the use of patronage, or did they win and 
keep public favor by their fidelity and by the ideas of which they 
were the types ? 

If these re-elections were the people's work, they are six re- 
corded verdicts of the people against casting out tried and faith- 
ful servants. They are six solemn verdicts against the present 
measure. Shall we, by the proposed amendment, affirm that the 
experience of the past has shown its need ? If so, how many of 
our great dead are we to upbraid or asperse ? Or shall we act, in 
spite of experience, as if the present were fraught with perils and 
corroding tendencies such as the past never knew ? 



THE MONTGOMERY CONSTITUTION. 357 

Traitors and slaveholders, forming a confederacy, made the 
one-term dogma a tenet of their faith. Denying the rights of 
humanity, and disbelieving the capacity of the people for self- 
government, they naturally sought to clog popular action and to 
hamper free agency. 

Slavery, and a denial to the people of the right to re-elect 
Presidents or not, as they please, fitly became corner-stones in 
such a structure. 

The Montgomery Constitution, so called, had this provision: 

Article II. 

" Section i. The executive power shall be vested in a President of 
the Confederate States of America. He and the Vice-President shall hold 
their offices for the term of six years; but the President shall not be re- 
eligible." Confederate Statutes-at-Large , 1861-62, p. I'j. 

The first and last offspring of this clause was Jefferson Davis. 
He was the only type and forerunner we have had of the con- 
stitutional single blessedness or single cursedness now urged 
upon us; he was our only approach to a foreordained one-term 
President. 

The judgment and action of the nation confirm the wisdom of 
the builders of our Constitution. The question of eligibility to 
successive terms was fully argued in the constitutional Conven- 
tion, and now, after near a century of experience, but little reason 
is likely to be added to the discussions then. It is not too much 
to say that the ** one-term principle," with a term of four years 
and an election by the people, would have found almost no sup- 
port in the constitutional Convention. 

The opposition to re-eligibility showed itself when it was pro- 
posed to make the Presidential term seven years, and to vest the 
election of the President in Congress; and it subsided when the 
term was shortened and the election was committed to the people. 
Even the seven years' term and the legislative election together 
furnished no arguments against re-eligibility strong enough to 
convince a majority or to convince the leading minds in the 
Convention. Yet the arguments were very cogent. It was said, 
with a force that could not be gainsaid, that if Congress was to 
appoint the executive, and he might be reappointed, he would 



358 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

have no rule of conduct so strong as the will of Congress, and 
that he would thus be dependent, and the creature of Congress 
literally. 

* * * * 4f * * 

What is there in our annals to falsify these judgments of our 
fathers ? Why should we plow up the old ways ? Have the sins 
and errors of Presidents, the wrongs and woes they have wrought, 
the crimes against liberty and justice they have done, occurred 
especially during second terms? Have illustrious actions char- 
acterized those Chief Magistrates alone who held office but once? 

A radiant constellation of deathless names appears to answer 
the inquiry. 

A President usurped the power to declare war, A President 
planned and waged war upon a weak and wretched people. A 
President helped to enact the Fugitive-Slave law of 1850, and a 
President signed it. A President connived at the overthrow of 
the Missouri Compromise, and sought to plant slavery in regions 
that were free. A President tried to clutch Cuba by force and 
fraud, and his Ministers signed the Ostend manifesto. A Presi- 
dent trembled with fear and forsook duty and oath, when he 
might have strangled a treason that stained a continent with 
blood. A President trod upon a race and turned his back upon 
his country, that he might exalt conspirators who caused the 
greatest funeral in history. Were these the deeds of Presidents 
who had been re-elected? No, sir: not one of these actors was 
gravely thought of for a second term. 

When nullification and secession first quailed before the beak 
and claw of federal power, Andrew Jackson was President, and 
he stamped out treason then, and made it odious for a quarter of 
a century. But Andrew Jackson received and sought a re-elec- 
tion, and he turned men out of office too, and put in supporters 
of his administration. 

When the country rocked in the throes of an earthquake, when 
the land was rent with a convulsion the greatest man has known, 
when politicians, factionists and malcontents deserted and reviled 
him, when a pitiless storm of rancor pelted on his head, Abraham 
Lincoln, with sublime fortitude and patience, did all things, and 
then stood. A martyr to traducers and meddlers in his life, a 



EULOGY OF GRANT. 359 

martyr to assassins in his death, he did not fall till he had sought 
and received, in a re-election, the benedictions of the American 
people Death cut short Lincoln's service and blasted the nation s 
hopes- death, stronger than resolutions or constitutional amend- 
ments' may blast the hope of the nation now. But death is the 
only archer whose bow will do the work. Critics and opponents, 
and men with personal grievances, cannot do it. Flaws and 
foibles they may find, but the heart and the judgment of the 
nation are with the unyielding soldier who made war victorious, 
and the quiet man who makes peace safe for all; and his name, 
and his transcendent deeds, will live in grateful memory when 
those who would blast his fame have moldered in forgotten graves 
and when their epitaphs have vanished utterly. 



r^ 



1852-1887. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

ORATORY. 

'T^HE scope of this volume precludes the possi- 
bility of publishing the fiftieth part of the 
orations of Mr. Conkling, or even examples of the 
wit and irony which he oftentimes used to enliven 
his speeches, arguments and conversations. He in- 
herited from his mother his talent for repartee and 
brilliant talk. Judge Conkling was a sedate gen- 
tleman of the old school, who rarely indulged in 
levity or witticisms. If it be a true saying that 
"The orator is born, not made," Roscoe Conkling 
is entitled to this distinction. We have seen that 
he began the study of elocution at the age of 
thirteen, and became a "stump-speaker" at nine- 
teen. His admission to the bar when but twenty 
years old, and his appointment as District-Attorney 
of Oneida County in the same year, gave him un- 
usual opportunities to cultivate forensic eloquence. 
Without having the advantage of a collegiate edu- 
cation, he read carefully while yet a boy the works 

of the best writers of English. He was an inde- 

360 



THE A TTRIB U TES OF AN ORA TOR. 3 6 1 

fatigable student, and he worked methodically 
though slowly. His power of memory was re- 
markable, and his ability to recall promptly his- 
torical facts, both political and literary, for argu- 
ment and illustration, was a gift which afforded 
material for oratorical effect that few men of his 
time have possessed. 

He was endowed by nature with the attributes 
of an orator ; first, and most of all, a magnificent 
presence (being six feet three inches tall), a gift 
which has characterized some of the greatest 
orators of all ages. Then a clear, powerful and 
slightly musical voice, a vigorous intellect and 
strong convictions, completed his capacity for 
eloquence. To these qualities we may add what 
has been already stated, viz., that his habits were 
abstemious, and hence his mental powers were 
not impaired by dissipation, which is fatal to the 
attainment of the highest and purest style of 
oratory. 

Those who remember Roscoe Conkling at an 
early age state that he was happy in his choice of 
words ; that he was a deliberate, almost hesitating 
speaker, somewhat ungraceful in his gestures ; 
that his manner was calm, convincing and com- 
monplace — at least, contrasted with his fervid, 
dramatic and oftentimes vehement manner of 
later years. 



362 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

He was the very embodiment of originality and 
mental energy. If poets may be called personce 
grates, he apparently believed that orators should 
be ranked in the same class. From his early years 
down to the end of his public life he sometimes 
invited a colloquy, nay, challenged an interruption, 
from one or more of his hearers. Let us illustrate : 
In the canvass of Oneida County before his elec- 
tion as Mayor of Utica, he would forcibly declare 
some political principle and then suddenly stop 
and exclaim: " There is John Potter up there in the 
gaUery, and George Eaton right here in front, 
either one of whom can corroborate what I have 
said. Indeed, they are better informed on the 
subject than I am." In his great speech at Cleve- 
land in the Presidential campaign of 1880 he ex- 
hibited eagerness for a political fight by challeng- 
ing some " Democrat in the audience " to take issue 
with him or to give ojie reaso?i why a change in 
the politics of the republic should be made ; and 
he offered then, as well as on many other occa- 
sions, to exchange places and yield the platform 
to any man who would come forward to confront 
him. Occasionally a spectator would ask a ques- 
tion, but the orator always had a ready reply. 

Concerning his mental energy it may be stated 
that he would often write down what he had said 
after the dehvery of an address to a jury or a 



AN ANECDOTE ABOUT MR. CLAY. 363 

political speech ; and he also occasionally put upon 
paper what he would have said if called upon 
to speak. This mental exercise soon corrected 
that universal fault— the omission of something 
that the speaker had meant to say. Roscoe 
Conkling early acquired the habit of charging 
his mind with all important facts that he wished 
to state, and in lengthy speeches refreshed 
his memory, as we have seen, by head-lines or 
notes. 

A friend tells the author that when Mr. Conk- 
ling was a law-student at Utica, Henry Clay 
delivered one of his great speeches, which, for 
some reason, no one had taken the pains to report. 
Young Conkling heard the address, and being re- 
quested to write it out from memory, reproduced 
it so fully that Mr. Clay is said to have re- 
marked that it was a very accurate account of his 
speech. It has been remarked that soon after attain- 
ing his majority his oratorical text-books were the 
Bible, Shakespeare, and the prose writings of Ma- 
caulay, Burke, Pitt, Fox and Erskine. Through- 
out his speeches are exact quotations, and the 
gist of quotations, from the above-named works. 

During his first term as mayor he, in a public 
address, used several scriptural terms. He had an 
early aversion to set phrases ; he detested that of 
"I desire," which is commonly used by public 



364 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Speakers to express the slightest wish. Mr. Conk- 
ling was wont to say that " we desire," and " I de- 
sire" should be confined to the conventicle. In 
his first scrap-book is a satire entitled, " A Touch 
of the Sublime," which is a ludicrous exaggeration 
of the traditional stump-orator, who strives to move 
the multitude by impassioned figures of speech. 
This news-cutting probably served as a warning to 
the young orator to avoid the pitfalls of eloquence. 
Yet he was glad to use the great idioms of our 
language; and sometimes even those that approxi- 
mated vulgarity he well knew how to express for- 
cibly. 

In his most eloquent discourses at the bar 
and on the floors of Congress he adroitly chose 
the right time and place to introduce without 
degradation a rough adage. A favorite saying 
throughout his life was, " Hew to the line, no mat- 
ter where the chips fly." Among other occasions, 
this phrase was uttered in his famous speech at 
Chicago in nominating General Grant for a third 
term. He had also the rare faculty of judiciously 
using the secondary accents in words, so as to 
make them express what was beyond the author- 
ized meaning. In conversation, he often resorted 
to this artifice, which added much to the piquancy 
of his language. These witticisms lose, of course, 
their efifect when read in cold type, for it has often 



IMPRESSIVE MANNER. 365 

been remarked of Roscoe Conkling, " It is not 
what he says that greatly impresses you, it is the 
way he says it." 

In the early part of this volume it is stated that 
he won in the campaign of 1852 a local reputation 
as an orator, and that his first speech in a State 
convention was made in that year. Although btit 
twenty-three years of age, his written speeches, 
which are found in our third chapter, show that he 
spoke terse and forcible English ; that his style was 
happy and often original ; and that his illustrations 
were convincing, and sometimes united striking 
argument with sarcasm. 

The proverb, "As the twig is bent, the tree's in- 
clined," may be applied to the subject of this 
memoir. Unlike many others who have attained 
greatness, he early gave evidence that he would 
some day rank with the greatest orators, advocates 
and statesmen of the time. While speaking, it 
was his habit to be intensely in earnest : and this 
quality may have been the secret of his hold upon 
his hearers. He could utter the tritest saying with 
such an impressive manner that his audience lis- 
tened attentively, whether they numbered two or 
two thousand. He had something to say when- 
ever he spoke, and had great tact in adapting him- 
self to an audience. He rarely made a speech 
without thorough preparation, or at least without 



366 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

turninof over in his mind the substance of what he 
would say if called upon. 

In his youth he formed the habit of watching 
individuals in the audience and of selecting two 
or three persons to address in particular. The 
biographer has heard him say that he has surprised 
friends by telling them how he noticed their con- 
duct during his speeches. 

Mr. Conkling was to the last degree a man of 
detail, and nothing escaped his notice. He would 
turn, while in court or on the platform, to differ- 
ent parts of the house, now bowing to a friend, 
now frowning at an enemy. He had always a 
stock of stories to tell from time to time in order 
to relieve his hearers. In his printed speeches 
these anecdotes were generally stricken out. The 
following non - partisan article concerning Mr. 
Conkling's earlier oratory is taken from the Ceji- 
tral l7idependeni,oi Utica and Ilion, for August 13, 
1858. 

Roscoe Conkling is, perhaps, the best debater in the county 
and one of the best in the State. Without attempting to analyze 
his style, or even to sketch that which is unreportable, his manner, 
with its electric power, we merely state the fact that his physique, 
his voice, his manner, his matter and his success all furnish the 
evidence of his claim to the title of orator. The multitudes who 
heard him during the six weeks he devoted to the Fremont cam- 
paign when he took the stump in behalf of the " Pathfinder," will 
bear a willing and ready testimony to the estimate we make of 
Mr. Conkling's great power of speech. Those who heard him at 



A RISING ORATOR. 367 

the Fremont mass meeting at Trenton, and the gatherings of the 
people in Utica, Clinton, Deerfield, New York Mills and else- 
where, pronounce his efforts the most eloquent and argumentative 
that were made in favor of Fremont during the campaign. In 
whatever he says or writes, we are impressed with the out-and- 
outness of his tone, with the freshness and boldness with which 
he assumes his positions, and the outspoken earnestness with 

which he maintains them. 

* * « * -sf * -se- 

Scraps of speeches and extracts from essays do not give a 
correct impression of the style of a speaker. We must have the 
live thunder of the voice, the electric power of the mind, the spirit 
which moves on the great deep of human sympathy, to appreciate 
the force and genius of an orator. Mr. Conkling has a command- 
ing voice, a graceful and easy manner, a choice selection of lan- 
guage, and his mind is stored with beautiful imagery, but he ex- 
cels in debate — argument is his forte, and there are few men who 
can successfully measure lances with him in the arena of discus- 
sion. 

Of Roscoe Conkling, the Utica Observer of April 
18, 1888, said: 

As a Republican campaign orator he was, so far as the Demo- 
cratic party was concerned, the most dangerous man of his time. 
Yet it is a wonderful and significant tribute to the peculiar quality 
of his personal and intellectual strength that the very party voters 
whom he unsparingly condemned, through the agency of their 
political devotion, grew to be his most sincere admirers and his 
warmest defenders. 

In delivery he was slow and careful to pro- 
nounce every syllable. When speaking to large 
audiences he gave special attention to the enun- 
ciation of the vowels ; and when addressing a 
judge or jury he displayed such fervor that he 
conveyed to his hearers the impression that he 



368 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

felt and believed every word that he uttered. He 
could modulate his voice so that in strength and 
flexibility it met every necessity of the popular 
occasion. 

He was in the habit of complimenting his audi- 
ence, and in some cases he carried this practice 
to extremes. He was essentially an actor ; and 
although he did not seek the applause of the gal- 
lery either in Congress or at the hustings, he en- 
joyed it. One of his Senatorial colleagues said, 
" Had Conkling studied for the stage, he would 
have become one of the greatest modern expo- 
nents of the drama." 

When addressing a political meeting he would 
oftentimes use the rising and falling inflection of 
the voice in a dramatic manner ; and he was quick 
to take advantage of an interruption or confusion 
in the audience. To illustrate : Many years ago 
he was speaking to Republicans in Oneida County 
when some persons in the rear of'the hall indulged 
in loud talking. He at once lowered his voice so 
as to be inaudible to all but those near him. 
Thereupon cries of " Louder, louder !" were raised. 
At first he pretended not to hear, by placing the 
hand behind the ear. When the audience per- 
sisted in their cries, he said, "What! 'louder'? I 
thought I was interrupting private conversation 
all over the house." It is unnecessary to say that 



INTERRUPTERS SILENCED. 



369 



the orator was allowed to proceed without further 
annoyance. 

In an autumnal campaign, when speaking at 
Buffalo, he was interrupted by a drunken man ac- 
costing him from the audience. Cries of " Put him 
out !" were raised. " No," said the Senator, " I 
wouldn't put him out ;" and turning to the chair- 
man, who was just moving to have the interrupt- 
er silenced, said, "Let me deal with him;" and, 
addressing himself to the stranger, continued : "I 
am waiting to find my neighbor ; I want to ask 
him to change places with me. If he won't do 
that, I ask him, whenever I speak so loud as to in- 
terrupt his conversation, to tell me and I will lower 
my voice." The Senator then resumed his speech. 

On one occasion a youth called out, " That's not 
so. Senator !" Quick as a flash he pointed to the 
person in front of the offender and said, " Will the 
gentleman with the gray coat and white vest please 
sit a little this way so that I can see my opponent ?" 
All eyes were turned to the interrupter, who there- 
after behaved himself properly. 

A noteworthy feature of his speeches was his 
wonderful command of language. He preferred 
short words, but he frequently wove them into 
picturesque phrases, which passed into the lan- 
guage of the day. His brother-in-law, Horatio 

Seymour, was also an employer of brief words. 
24 



Z70 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING, 



The ex-Governor once wrote an address to school- 
teachers which consisted chiefly of monosyllables. 
It is possible that through intimacy with Mr. Sey- 
mour he early adopted, to some extent, his style of 
speech. 

A member of President Grant's second Cabinet 
told the writer the following anecdote : 

One day Senator Conkling was calling at my 
department, when he remarked, " Young man, do 
you ever make speeches ?" 

The reply was, " Sometimes." 

Then, said the Senator, "You should use short 
words." He then thus quoted the first verse of 
the Gospel according to St. John — 

" In the be-gin-ning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." 

He pronounced the word "beginning" so dis- 
tinctly that it sounded like three words. He then 
recited the next three verses, which, with two ex- 
ceptions, consist of monosyllables. 

The Hon. Charles Sumner said of him : He 
knew English to the last shade." Senator Thur- 
man once remarked in debate : "There is no man 
in the Senate so great a master of language as the 
Senator from New York (Mr. ConkHng). We all 
confess that ;" and James Parton has lately said to 
the author, " Your uncle was a master of expres- 
sion." 



HIS STYLE OF SPEAKING CHANGES. 37I 

Mr. Conkling early acquired the habit of recit- 
ing while dressing for breakfast, often giving 
entertainment to his whole household by selec- 
tions from the modern masters of eloquence. It 
is not generally known that his most striking 
quality as an orator was his marvelous power of 
mimicry. An intimate legal friend has said to 
the author : " Before Roscoe Conkling went to 
Congress he often amused us by his talent for 
mimicry. I have heard him imitate Judge Morgan, 
in a charge to the jury, so well that if I had shut 
my eyes I would have thought the judge himself 
was speaking." 

After entering Congressional life Mr. Conkling 
changed slightly his style of speaking. A wit- 
ness of his speech against slavery on January 30, 
1861, says that during the delivery he walked a 
little in the aisle. When he became a Republican 
leader of the Senate his seat was on the middle 
aisle, and although he could then easily take a few 
steps from his desk, he generally stood close to 
his chair. In his campaign addresses he became 
less familiar with the audience and perhaps more 
impressive in his manner. 

We have seen that Mr. Conkling was always 
formidable when before a jury. After his election 
to the Senate in 1867, he undertook but two crim- 
inal cases, which were tried in the same year. 



372 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

He thus lost many opportunities for the display 
of persuasive oratory. 

In 1869 he won a very large verdict in an action 
for personal injuries against a railroad company. 
He summed up to an intelligent jury, and his ex- 
cessive recovery was due to what we may call the 
eloquence of " personal magnetism." His great 
power over an audience was well shown in the 
New York State Conventions at Syracuse in 1871, 
and at Utica in 1880. 

On the former occasion there was a mortal 
fight between the two rival factions of the Repub- 
lican party. There was danger that his friends 
might not succeed. Wide consternation' was 
prevailing, but at the critical moment he threw 
himself into the breach. He was victorious ; 
but it was a triumph in the face of imminent 
defeat. 

In the Utica Convention of February, 1880, the 
unwise plan of issuing tickets had been adopted. 
Hence the enemies of Mr. Conkling procured fac- 
simile tickets for their supporters. The gallery 
was packed by a hostile crowd. When Mr. Conk- 
ling rose to speak, the intruders became so boist- 
erous that his voice was hardly audible. Pausing 
a moment, he quoted slowly, with telling effect, 
Raleigh's line : -^ 

The shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb. 



THREE IMP OR TA NT SPEECHES. ^JT} 

A burst of applause followed, and the noisy mem- 
bers of the audience were awed to silence. 

His speech nominating- Grant for a third term, 
which is printed in another chapter, gave the Sen- 
ator a chance to exercise his mighty sway over an 
immense throng. 

Some of his colleagues have remarked that his 
three most impressive speeches were delivered in 
the executive sessions of the Senate during the 
years 1870, 1876 and 1877. The first was upon 
the confirmation of Thomas Murphy as Collector 
of the port of New York. Senator Fenton had 
for four hours spoken against the nomination. 
Mr. Conkling wished time to reply before his col- 
league could force a vote. Hence he went to a 
friendly Senator from the West and asked him to 
move that he be given sufficient time to refute Mr. 
Fenton's charges. The request was promptly 
acceded to, and Mr. Conkling was allowed an hour. 
He then began, speaking without notes, and 
warmly defended Mr. Murphy. He directed 
against his colleague a fire of scathing sarcasm 
which baffles description. Concerning this speech 
one aged Senator said to the author : " It was the 
most terrible philippic I ever heard. The Senate 
sat spell-bound for an hour. We all listened with 
breathless anxiety." The result was a complete 
victory for Mr. Conkling, for Thomas Murphy 



374 ^/^^ AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

was confirmed with but tJiree dissenting votes. A 
friendly Senator from the South who was present, 
afterward remarked to Mr. Conkhng, " If you had 
spoken of me in that way I should have killed 
you." The Senator from New York smiled silently 
in reply. 

The second speech to which we have just refer- 
red was during" the trial of General William W. 
Belknap in the spring of 1876. Senator Conk- 
ling had the floor on two afternoons and spoke 
some six hours. The second day was sultry, and 
the Senator suffered much from the close atmos- 
phere of the Senate chamber. The bystanders in 
the corridors were expecting an adjournment every 
instant. At last a Republican came out and said 
to a friend of the author : " Conkling has changed 
the result. We have just heard four hours of 
royal-purple eloquence." 

The third memorable speech was upon the re- 
moval of Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo B. Cor- 
nell, respectively, as Collector and Naval Officer 
of the port of New York. 

Their terms had not expired. They were Mr. 
Conkling's warm supporters, and he was not will- 
ing that a Republican President should remove 
them capriciously to gratify an ambitious Cabinet 
minister. 

Accordingly, although the persons proposed for 



HIS TRIUMPHS. 375 

their successors were capable men, he would not 
remain silent when two officers in good standing 
were to be displaced without cause. To this end 
he made a most pathetic appeal, and the Senate 
rejected the two nominations. After adjourn- 
ment, however, Messrs. Arthur and Cornell were 
suspended in July, 1878. 

We have space to describe but few of his ora- 
torical triumphs in the open Senate and on the 
hustings. As a debater, his superiority could not 
be questioned. His character was controversial. 
He coveted an opponent as much as a subject ; a 
provocation as much as an incitement. The mas- 
terly manner in which he conquered Senator Schurz 
in the controversy over the sale of arms to France, 
and his victories over Senators Hill and Lamar 
upon other memorable occasions, disclosed his 
great resources in combats where " Greek meets 
Greek " in the tug of parliamentary war. 

An orator has been defined as "one who, in a 
public speech, persuades an audience to his pur- 
pose." Surely Senator Conkling's powers as an 
orator were well shown in addressing popular au- 
diences on the political issues of the hour. It was 
a common thing for him to hold for hours thou- 
sands of hearers with enthusiasm, if not spell- 
bound. Complete readiness for the occasion was 
a notable attribute of this orator. 



376 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

We shall not further dwell upon his oratorical 
triumphs, but the greatness of his capacity was 
never more conspicuously shown than during the 
campaign of 1880, the last canvass in which he 
took part. No speaker was then in such demand. 
His speeches were very long and each one was 
distinct in character and phraseology. He there- 
by displayed a versatility rarely equaled in the 
United States, and perhaps not surpassed by 
Mr. Gladstone in his tours through Great Britain. 

Concerning Senator Conkling's method of pre- 
paring speeches, it may be said that his first speech 
in a campaign was usually written out. It was a 
statement of the case and became the basis for a 
series of speeches. He rarely used notes, except 
when giving statistics. He was commonly most 
effective on occasions of emergency whilst thor- 
oughly aroused. During many years he was the 
spokesman of his party in the State of New York, 
and persons often traveled twenty miles to hear 
him. Were his speeches collected in one volume, 
they would make an invaluable manual of the po- 
litical history of the nation from 1861 to 1881. 

Shortly before his death Mr. Conkling remarked, 
in substance: "Whenever the question of high 
and low tariff is raised in New York, and properly 
presented to the people, a majority of the voters 
of the State vv^ill favor the high protective system." 



TIMEL V OR A TIOXS. 2>77 

In view of the result of the election of 1888, de- 
spite Democratic patronage, this prediction of Mr. 
ConkUng, it will be seen, was prophetic. 

Regarding Senator Conkling's readiness as a 
debater, one of his distinguished Congressional 
associates said: "It often seemed to me that 
Conkling could get up and, apparently without 
preparation, make a long and convincing speech 
upon any topic." 

Senator Conkling, unlike one of his " college- 
educated " colleagues, did not speak for posterity. 
His debates and orations on the floor of both 
Houses of Congress were temporary in the sense 
that they were adapted to the day and the hour 
of the subject under consideration. Mr. Conkling 
once said that he never had time to " polish " his 
speeches. They were not drafted and rewritten 
with the care of the collegian who competes for 
the class prize in composition. In his famous dis- 
course on the extra session of the Senate, April 
24, 1879, he closed by saying: " I have with can- 
dor spoken somewhat of my thoughts of the du- 
ties and dangers of the hour." 

As specimens of Mr. Conkling's eloquence, the 
following extracts are here printed. 

We begin with an excerpt from one of his 
earliest preserved speeches in the campaign of 
1852: 



^v 



»78 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JROSCOE CONK LING. 

* * * There is a story somewhere that in ancient times 
he mountains seemed in labor and shook with mighty convul- 
sions. The people collected from far and near to behold the 
wonderful spectacle, expecting some mighty results. At last out 
crept a mouse, the only fruit of all the quaking. I was remind- 
ed of this fable in reading an account of the gigantic labor and 
the dwarfish birth of the Baltimore Convention — a convention 
which thrust aside all the eminent and able men of a party to 
make room for a man of vast and various misinformation, brill- 
iant disqualifications and prodigious moral requirements. 

But who is the candidate whose election at this time we are 
called upon to oppose, this mouse of the mountains of New 
Hampshire ? 

In the first place, his party had great difficulty in ascertain- 
ing his name: it was called Page and Price, and when I heard it 
called Purse it made me think of the adage about making a purse 
of the ears of an animal which runs about the streets sometimes. 
His name being established, they set about his history, and after 
publishing a biography of his father, claiming it to be his, they 
found that the lineage of their candidate ran back to the Percys 
of Northumberland and lord some one or other. Happily for us, 
we are saved all trouble in looking up the name and ancestry of 
our candidate. Winfield Scott was baptized upon the battle-fields 
of his country, in the blood of his country's enemies; and the peo- 
ple of the two hemispheres were the sponsors at the altar. He 
possesses no charnel-house greatness, no respectability reflected 
back from the tomb; he claims no descent from a house of Eng- 
lish nobles, and he needs none; he stands enrolled in nature's 
peerage, and carries his patent of nobility in his heart. 

I have no desire to attack the personal character of Franklin 
Pierce. So far as I know, his character is such as to entitle him, 
not only to immunity from slander, but to commendation and re- 
spect; and if it were not, his habits and vices are not, in my judg- 
ment, fit subjects of political discussion. But, gentlemen, while 
we stay our hands from meddling with the private life and moral 
character of Mr. Pierce, we must not forget the brutal attacks 
and vile slanders which, in 1844, were poured out upon the head 
of Henry Clay. At the Convention which nominated James K. 



W INFIELD SCO TT AND HENR Y CLA Y. 3 79 

Polk a placard was exhibited in the vicinity of the hall where the 
Convention met, upon which was painted a full-length portrait of 
Henry Clay, holding in one of his hands a pack of cards, and in 
the other a pistol, thus to represent at a single stroke the duehs 
and the ^ambler. The same occurred at a meeting afterward held 
at the town of Oriskany in your own county. Hunted and pur- 
sued his private life invaded, the most loathsome slanders circu- 
lated ao-ainst him in the whole opposition press, with scarcely an 
exception, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico-no won- 
der that, in his own words, he '< seemed to himself like an old stag 
who, having been coursed by the hunters and the hounds through 
brakes and briers, over fields and rivers, had returned once more 
to his lair to lie down and die "! It is not for us to take up this 
vile warfare against our opponents for the sake of avenging the 
wrongs of Henry Clay, for vengeance belongs not to man. But 
we have a duty to discharge to our departed chieftain. Henry 
Clay is gone, but his principles remain. He has left us a noble 
inheritance to guard, and it behooves us to preserve it and trans- 
mit it bright and unimpaired to those who shall succeed us. 



* 



About the year 1853 Mr. Conkling, while ad- 
dressing a jury in a murder trial, uttered these 
words : 

Dark and dreary as is the day, it is far too bright for such a 
deed " Huno- be the heavens with black," and let the court-house 
and all Herkimer County be hung in mourning on the day when 
twelve of her sons will take from their fellow-man his life or his 
liberty on such testimony as this. 



* * * 



* * * 



The day is too bright and too beautiful for such a deed. Na- 
ture and man should shudder! Heaven and earth should give 
note of horror; the skies should be weeping; the winds should be 
siahino-; the bells should be tolling; the court-house should be 
hung in mourning; the jury-box should be covered with crape- 
on the day when a father, a husband and a citizen of Herkimer 
County is sent to a prison or a gallows upon such testimony as this. 



380 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

In Chapter VII. (pages 1 15-1 18) the reader will 
find some eloquent passages regarding the then 
perilous state of the Union. 

The description of the battle of Ball's Bluif in 
Chapter IX. (pages 140-147) is a good example of 
Mr. Conkling's narrative. 

He made, April 29, 1862, a forcible speech en- 
titled, "The Special Committee on Government 
Contracts — What it has Done." Among other 
things he said : 

The doings of the Committee — its extraordinary doings — have 
led to the most widespread misapprehensions and exaggerations. 
They have filled the whole country with indiscriminate suspicion 
and distrust. The political complexion of the Committee is such 
that its sayings and doings were calculated to have far greater 
effect than would have been the case if it had stood in political 
antagonism to the present Administration. Its flitting constantly 
from State to State, sometimes from one side of the Union to the 
other, the vague mystery in which it has been enshrouded, with 
its still vaguer givings out, its secret sessions, and above all, the 
sweeping and unmeasured declarations of some of its members, 
have engendered the belief, not only at home, but abroad — and, I 
judge from the foreign papers, more abroad than at home — that 
corruption and venality are universal in this country, and that 
swindling and theft, like the frogs of Egypt, have entered the very 
kneading-troughs of the land. Such an impression is a wicked 
aspersion upon the American people; it is as false of them as of 
any nation in history, and if possible more false now in the hour 
of their patriotic trial than ever in the time of their prosperity and 
peace. I charge no man with a design to do this great wrong, but 
it has been done, and as an humble lover of my country I deplore 
it with impatient regret. In addition to this all-embracing injury, 
the proceedings of the Committee have done injustice— gross, 
irreparable injustice, to individuals and classes. So much is ad- 



A COMMITTEE CENSURED. 38 I 

mitted now, though not voluntarily admitted; but it is said to have 
arisen from inadvertence and mistake. So be it; that does not 
lighten the obloquy which has blasted private character and pub- 
lic reputation. 

* * * -Sf * -Sf- * 

Groundless as it may be, it has gone forth as an announce- 
ment by the Committee — gone beyond recall. Yes, sir, a poisoned 
arrow, poisoned with the virus of exaggeration and feathered with 
the franking privilege, has been shot far and wide to the remotest 
confines of the loyal States of the republic. Like other state- 
ments and insinuations made by that gentleman, however elabo- 
rately they may have been prepared and conned over, this is a re- 
proach, an impeachment of the existing Government, which I 
think, on reflection, he will long to recall. But, sir, another evil, 
greater, perhaps, than any other, has resulted from these anom- 
alous proceedings. A system of semi-judicial, one-sided trial 
and condemnation has been inaugurated for the first time, I am 
happy to know, in the history of the nation; a system which finds 
no place in any enlightened jurisprudence, nor in the genius of 
any free government, and no defence in any sound code of mor- 
als; a system utterly subversive of the plainest principles and 
safeguards of justice and the rights of the citizen. Jurisdiction 
has been assumed of the characters of men, and their rights of 
property, and judgments blasting to both have been pronounced 
on ex parte testimony, testimony taken in secret, and of which 
the parties aspersed were never informed. Men have thus been 
tried unheard, and convicted, stigmatized, and hung up to fester 
in infamy as long as their names can retain a place on the roll of 
remembered names. * * * 

Mr. Conkling closed his long argument in the 
famous Haddock court-martial (see page 243) in 
these words : 

This trial and its result may be looked at by those who 
come after us as a straw denoting currents in the decadence or 
the regeneration of public morals. Should it be ever so recurred 
to, each one who has acted his part in it decently and in order 



382 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

may rest assured that it will be well with him. One humble part 
has been, we are told, acted zealously — that part is mine. It is 
true that I have been diligent in laying bare these iniquities. 
Give me a certificate of my zeal that I may leave it to my children, 
and bid them say of me : *' He did his utmost to gibbet at the 
cross-roads of public justice all those who, when war had drenched 
the land with blood and covered it with mourning, parted the gar- 
ment of their country among them, and cast lots upon the vesture 
of the Government while they held positions of emolument and 
trust." 

On July 27, 1866, while opposing the admission 
of David T. Patterson (an ex-Confederate) as a 
Senator-elect from Tennessee, he remarked : 

* * * If the oath cannot stand against Mr. Patterson, it 
cannot stand against one of those who, reckoning all the fifteen 
former slave States, are to cast ninety-four or ninety-six votes in 
this House, if Representatives are to be aduiitted without waiting 
for the ratification of the amendment of the Constitution chang- 
ing the rule of apportionment and representation. The South- 
ern members will then number almost one-half of this entire body, 
and they will find enough here in sympathy with him, if they are 
to be men who cannot by an oath purge themselves of treason, 
to ring the knell of the day during which the public credit is to 
be preserved, during which the public faith is to be kept invio- 
late, during which repudiation is to be spurned and driven from 
these Halls. Sir, I say it is amazing; I say this whole scene to- 
night is a sad commentary, a picture sorrowful to be gazed upon 
by the people of this country, and justly sorrowful to none so 
much as to those who have argued and believed that we would 
have been safe heretofore" in admitting even the most regener- 
ated, the most redeemed, the most disenthralled of the rebellious 

States. 

•X- * * * * -X- * 

In a speech at Utica, September 13, 1866, enti- 
tled "Congress and the President," he said: 



THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF iS66. 383 

The commercial, the agricultural, the material, the social, even 
the political, prosperity of the South did not and does not de- 
pend at all upon whether members of Congress from the South 
commence speaking and voting twelve months sooner or twelve 
months later. If no object was aimed at but the general good 
of the country, and of the South as a part of the country, nothing 
could be lost by leaving the federal legislation and the general 
Government temporarily in charge of those who sealed their de- 
votion to it by adhering to it and upholding it while it was gasp- 
ing for life. 

Left free to manage their own Governments and their own af- 
fairs, with their people pardoned of all their sins, and their prop- 
erty left to them, and restored to them where it had been confis- 
cated, hasty representation in Congress was the last thing the 
Southern States needed for any honest purpose. It was the last 
thing which, left to themselves, they would have thought of de- 
manding. After rejecting every overture of amnesty and pardon, 
if they would but stop the war; after having kept up a savage ef- 
fort to destroy the Government until the utmost harm had been 
done, and their weapons were actually struck from Lheir hands — 
the last thing to enter their minds, if properly treated, would have 
been the attempt instantly to assume control of that country which 
they had burdened with debt and filled with mourning. 

Human audacity is unequal to such assumption; and, besides, 
the true interests of the Southern masses could not be promoted 
by it. They needed everything bid representation. 

They had need to sow, they had need to plant, they had need 
to build, they had need to mend, they had need to heal, they 
had need to re-create — in short, their need of needs was to go 
to work. 

To be permitted to do this was their brightest hope when the 
war closed. With everything forfeited, by the laws of every civil- 
ized nation, with their lives, their liberties, their possessions all 
gone, according to the plainest provisions of the Constitution, 
the insurgents would have accepted, joyfully, less than you and 
the whole North would have given them; they would have thanked 
you for their lives. 

Their leading men made no secret of this — they could not 



384 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

make a secret of it — it was patent on the face of things. Had the 
masses of the South heard amnesty proclaimed for them, had the 
ringleaders of the Rebellion been dealt with according to the law 
as our fathers made it, or had they been put in any way on their 
good behavior and kept there, the Southern people would have 
gone to tilling the soil, and building up commerce and manufact- 
ures; and then no Freedmen's Bureau would have been needed, 
because there would have been demand for all the labor to be 
found, and a fair day's wages for a fair day's work; then we 
should have had no such standing army as is now kept up, be- 
cause good order and peace would have been the common inter- 
est and necessity of all. * * * 

Is it not amazing that such an uproar can be raised on such 
a pretext ? I say pretext, because the allegation is that we are 
''punishing" penitent and conquered men. We hear it said, 
" They gave up, they cried enough, what do you want to pun- 
ish them for after that?" It isn't true that they "gave up" 
— they did not give up, they were actually compelled to submit; 
but suppose they did give up, could anything be more shameless 
than the pretence that we are " punishing" them ? Punishment! 
— what is meant by punishment ? Three hundred thousand men 
sleep in bloody shrouds; the nation groans under a debt which 
only posterity can pay; every luxury, every comfort, every neces- 
sary of life, is burdened and embittered by taxation; the world 
stands aghast at the atrocity of the crime which has been perpe- 
trated against humanity itself; and yet nobody is to blame. The 
Philadelphia Convention says they acted from what they believed 
to be their duty. No man has been convicted of treason. No 
man has been put on trial for treason. Old John Brown is the 
only man who ever expiated treason on an American gibbet, and 
that was "treason against a sovereign State." No man but 
Jefferson Davis is in prison, and the papers say he is about to be 
set free. All the others have been discharged, including the pi- 
rate Semmes — he has been elected a judge in Alabama, but he is 
undergoing the torture of being " unrepresented," and is now 
watching the canvass in the North to see whether the election will 
put an end to his sufferings. The President inquires if this is the 
Government of Washington. I ask you if it is the Government 



A RIOT IN NEW YORK. 385 

of Washington. Is it the Government of men who wrote on the 
frontlet of their statutes, " The punishment for treason shall be 
death," and who did not write "The reward of treason shall be 
wholesale pardon, and representation beyond that enjoyed by 
loyal men, for traitors whose hands and faces are dripping with 
the blood of murder" ? 

Marvelous as all this seems, the fact is upon us that a plan is 
afoot, with a large following in the country, to give over the Gov- 
ernment into the hands of its enemies. This brings us to the con- 
sideration from which the question of Reconstruction derives its 
real, present importance. As the chief element in the election, it 
threatens us with dangers and evils which can be averted only by 
the election of Union representatives ioi Congress in so many dis- 
tricts that there will be a true majority over all other districts. 
North and South, united. * * * 

In the Senate, February 22, 1870, Mr. Conkling, 
after disposing of the legal issue involved in the 
proposition to repeal a resolution of the Legisla- 
ture of New York ratifying the fifteenth amend- 
ment to the Constitution, said: 

When emancipation was proclaimed, the charioteers of 
Democracy plied whip and spur to trample down all who would 
allow black men even to fight or to work under the flag of the 
nation. * * * 

Truth and common sense were hooted and buffeted, and un- 
kenneled cowardice and ignorance barked in hideous chorus. 
Wantonness and infatuation ruled the hour. Drugged with error, 
dizzy with fear and maddened with passion, men and women 
were led from meetings to mobs; from a dance of faction to a 
dance of death. In the city of New York, duped and imbruted 
thousands rioted in blood; the blade, the bullet and the cup did 
each its work, and the torch sent up from the Christian soil of 
that imperial city the smoke of a burning orphan asylum, to tell 
in heaven of the inhuman bigotry, the horrible barbarity, of man. 
Emancipation prevailed, the uplifted banners of opposition and 
25 



386 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

revolt went down, and the nation's flag waved safe conduct to 
black and white alike from Mexico to British America. 

* ^ * * * * * 

The objection, we are told, is that ignorance will be introduced 
into the ballot-box, and the suffrage will be cheapened and de- 
graded! Is not that a masquerade where managers of modern 
Democracy appear as the champions of an uncontaminated and 
immaculate ballot ? How will history christen the occasion on 
which the chiefs of the society of Tammany assume the role of 
defenders of the ballot-box against ignorance and vice ? Such a 
proceeding cannot be a drama; grim enough for tragedy, it would 
be hooted as ironical; too grotesque for comedy, it would be 
hissed as an extravagance. 

Sextus as a vestal virgin, Shylock as a philanthropist, Satan 
as a reformer, wolves as shepherds! If these personations be not 
easy and natural, what shall be said when the managers of the 
Democratic organization in the city of New York personify the 
purity and preservation of elections ? 

The fifteenth amendment * * * will give the ballot in the 
State of New York to seven or eight thousand men. These few will 
be endowed with political rights amid the scowls of multitudes. 
Some of them may be ignorant and debased, but not one is less 
deserving of a vote or of respect than those who, themselves de- 
praved, have been organizers and architects of depravity. This 
is a truth for which the Constitution is a fitting place — the birth- 
day of JVashingto/i a fitting time. 

In a campaig-n speech at Albany, October 11, 
1 87 1, he thus denounced corruption. 

* * * America alone has a government rooted m the people 
— a government with a base so broad that the mightiest of wars 
has vainly dashed against it and been shivered into spray. Proof 
to the tempest shock, our nationa/ity need no longer dread the storm 
— force cannot uproot it. But the pestilence that wastcth at noon- 
day, what shall be said of that ? Corruption, with its stealthy 
creep, its leprous touch and its deadly breath — corruption which has 
rotted and wasted so many fair fabrics — icnll that mark us for de- 



HE DENOUNCES CORRUPTION. 387 

struction too, as the sea-bird blasts the tree on which he builds his 
nesti The times are too murky to forecast this question; it 
must be hammered out of the anvil of the future. It is not a 
question for the battle-field, it must be answered every day, and, 
most of all, election-day. It concerns politics and political parties. 
Courts, Congresses, Legislatures, City Governments — all these 
are the public agencies; but what they are, and what they do, de- 
pends at first and at last on elections. Everything in public 
affairs comes from the ballot-box. Every reform must be upheld 
by the ballot-box, or it is a tree without roots. 

Crying, flagrant, dangerous abuses challenge attention in this 
great State through all its length and breadth. Reforms, if at- 
tainable at all, must come through one of the two political parties. 
Fortunately or otherwise we must make choice between the two 
great organizations, into which the whole country has long been 
divided. One or the other is to govern us; there is no alterna- 
tive. Which is the safer to trust ? That is the question. * * * 

Some eloquent passages are found in the speech 
on the "One -Term Dogma," January ii, 1872 
(Chapter XX). 

In a speech of March 19 and 20, 1873, concern- 
ing the alleged bribery of the Legislature of Kan- 
sas in the recent election of a Senator, he said : 

But, sir, Mr. Caldwell is not indebted to himself or to his 
merits, nor alone to his money, for being chosen Senator. It was 
not Mr. Caldwell who was elected ; as I read the evidence, it was 
the city of Leavenworth. What politicians know as " the shrieks 
of locality" prevailed in the election so largely that I am moved 
to say, as I have sometimes thought, that locality is perhaps the 
first element of American greatness. When I remember all that 
fell to the lot of men because they lived south of Mason and Dix- 
on's line, and all that befell men because they lived north of 
Mason and Dixon's line; when I remember the factitious impor- 
tance given to the claims of locality, I repeat that in American 



388 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

politics, as a rule, locality is perhaps the first element of politi- 
cal success. Here is the code of Maryland [holding up a vol- 
ume]. Look at the importance which Maryland attaches to 
locality and the will with which she orders the residence of her 
Senators. Here is a statute, in violation of the Constitution of 
the United Stales, in which stand these words : 

One of the Senators shall always be an inhabitant of the Eastern Shore, 
and the other of the Western Shore, of Maryland. 

" My Maryland." [Laughter.] 

Leavenworth wanted a Senator; and all the cohorts, all the 
dwellers in Mesopotamia, in the hill-country and in the valley, ral- 
lied under the banner of Leavenworth! Then it was that Thomas 
Carney loomed into importance; he lived at Leavenworth. If 
two candidates were to be presented from Leavenworth, both 
would fail ; division would be destruction, and they would be 
buried in a common grave. Thus came the opportunity, first to 
blackmail Caldwell, and afterward to snap at him with less than 
the magnanimity of the reptile that rattles before it strikes. 
****** * 

Senators, let us, the elect of States, sitting as judges and jurors, 
see to it that here no sail is trimmed to catch a passing breeze of 
applause or acclamation. Let us see to it that no coward thought 
of praise or blame creeps into the wavering balances in which 
truth is to be weighed. When the din and sensation of this hour 
are forgotten, when we have left these seats forever, when the 
volume of our lives shall be closed, when the relics of these times 
shall be "gathered into History's golden urn," let there be found 
in this painful case a record showing that the American Senate 
was calm enough, firm enough, trustful enough, to maintain the 
genius, the spirit, the methods and the safeguards of the Consti- 
tution as our fathers gave them to us. 

The following is an extract from a campaign 
speech at Brooklyn, October 30, 1874. 

This land of ours has long been kept filled with din about uni- 
versal corruption. A foreigner reading a large part of the Ameri- 
can press, or traveling through the United States and listening to 



DEFENDS PUBLIC OFFICERS. 389 

ivhat has come to be the general rule of talk, would suppose we had 
fallen on the ?nost depraved and venal era of the republic, if not of 
the world. Everything is depreciated. Nothing is exempt from the 
mildew of detraction. From the President down, etery man in pub- 
lic station, every candidate for public station, is treated as if he 7vere 
a vulgar trickster and schemer. The presu7nptions of common sense 
are rei^ersed. Formerly, if a man was selected by his neighbors for 
a public trust, the presumption was that he 7vas worthy, and one of 
the presutnptions of the law for a thousand years has been that a public 
officer does his duty. But now, a man need only be nominated to be 
at once suspected ; he need only be in office to be the mark for e7>ery 
foul imputation. All this, of course, takes effect chiefly on the 
party in power. For fourteen years the Republican party has 
held power, save during the three years when the Democratic 
party and Andrew Johnson pressed each other to each other's 
bosoms. What has been accomplished during these memorable 
years I forbear to state. If we dare refer to the past we are told 
that we must not, that a party cannot, live on its past — and this is 
true ; but when you want to know what a man or body of men can 
do or will do, it is rather useful to know what they have already 

done. 

^f * -x- -s- * * ^ 

This republic of ours is the only considerable experiment ex- 
tant on the globe, of a government "of the people, for the' people 
and by the people." Its theatre is a continent blessed with abun- 
dant and matchless natural advantages. Its polity and its institu- 
tions are the work of extraordinary men, drawn from many older 
nationalities — men profoundly versed in government — and they 
consecrated themselves to devising a system superior to any 
mankind had known. It has endured a hundred years in the 
world's most enlightened age, and if now the experiment has cul- 
minated in one grand carnival of venality and paradise of trick- 
sters and plunderers, who dares come next in the march of nations 
to dispute the divinity of kings ? 



In closing an argument on a railroad tax case in 
1874, Senator Conkling took occasion to refer to the 



;90 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



abuse that is sometimes heaped upon a lawyer 

for espousing an unpopular cause. He closed as 

follows : 

In this country the morale of the profession in this respect 
has not yet reached the standard which has long been maintained 
in Westminster Hall; but I would hold myself unworthy a place 
on the rolls if, on being asked to argue a case involving a great 
sum of money, the reputations of many and the interests of many 
more, and involving also grave questions of law, I should shrink 
from standing at the bar of the country and vindicating as best I 
could the Constitution, the law and the right, even for an unpop- 
ular or hated client, because political opponents or slanderers 
might defame me for doing it. I give my gage that if the time 
shall ever come, politics or no politics, when I am afraid to brave 
such dangers — afraid to hew to the line of professional integrity 
and fidelity, let the chips fly where they may, I will confess my- 
self unworthy to stand before a court, unworthy membership of 
the Bar, unworthy the association of men who place truth and 
honor above the passionate discords, the groveling resentments, 
or the acclamations of the hour. 

******* 

Thus he concluded his forcible speech concern- 
ing " The Nation and Louisiana " January 28 and 

29, 1875: 

***** * 

Mr. President, I have been speaking of history — the history 
of Louisiana. It is the statesman's task to turn history into phil- 
osoj)hy and prophecy. The modes adopted in New York and 
Louisiana are widely unlike; there is a broad difference between 
them. Whence comes this difference ? In what is it rooted ? 
Four million black men are the great factor in the problem. 
When the fate of the nation trembled in the wavering balances of 
war, they struck no blow at the republic; they stood by the flag; 
they prayed for it; they toiled for it; they fought for it. The 
American people said they should be free and be citizens; and 
the American people imbedded their will in the bulwarks of the 



THE AMENDMENTS OF FREEDOM. 39 1 

Constitution. The nation forgave its enemies, and left the ballot 
and the right of self-government to them. But the same nation, 
at the same time, conferred the ballot and the right of self-gov- 
ernment on those who, galled by centuries of oppression, had 
still been true in the supreme hour, and had won their liberty and 
their citizenship on* gory fields of battle. Congress did not do 
this. The people did it. The people in the States, speaking 
through their State Legislatures, put manhood, citizenship, the 
ballot, and equal rights for black men, into the Constitution. 

There stand the amendments of freedom ! The nation is for 
them; civilization is for them; humanity is for them; God is for 
them; and political parties and revolutionists shall not prevail 
against them. A great body of men in the land is not for them, 
but against them. A great body of men in the land will not sub- 
mit to them. Social equality is no part of them, but hate and 
pride rebel against them. This is the moral rebellion of to-day. 
Drop it in good faith, man-like, and the South will be tranquil in 

half a year. 

*****«■* 

This is the issue for the South. I fear for awhile it will remain 
the issue. Those most concerned can untie the knot. If they 
are imprisoned in commotion and disorder, they carry the key to 
their own prison, and can unlock it if they will and when they will. 
Those who have their confidence can persuade them to do it. 
Here is the solution — an easy, honorable, effectual solution. It 
will not be brought about by stirring the smoldering flame that 
burns upon a charnel-stone. It will not be brought about by 
exasperating ancient animosities or reviving sectional schemes. 
It will not be gained by cloaking or denying the truth. It will 
not be wrouo-ht out by evasions and perversions, worse than apolo- 
gies for wrong. It will come, when it does come, from an honest, 
manly acquiescence in the modes and the spirit of free majorities 
— the best system of government man has known — although, like 
everything human, it is imperfect, like everything human it some- 
times falls short of exact and perfect justice. 

In the State campaign of 1875, referring to a 
pamphlet making a false claim upon the voters to 



392 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

support a Democratic Governor, Senator Conkling 
said: 

* * * T\\\?, tract being drab, and a work of fiction, would 
seem to belong in some sort to the yellow-covered literature of 
the times. It is being sent broadcast, as lithograph letters — which 
passed off as autograph letters, purporting to come from one of 
the candidates for Governor — were sent last year to the people, in- 
cluding bell-boys and chambermaids in hotels, soliciting votes. 
It is made up largely of speeches of Governor Tilden, addressed 
to boards of trade and agricultural fairs, and delivered on other 
non-partisan occasions of civility and hospitality. My friend the 
professor, in the box, will see in this a resemblance to an accord- 
ion, something of the kind upon which mendicants (not political) 
play upon the street-corners. It contracts and expands easily. It 
appears to have been issued by Tilden & Co., medicine men; it 
states that its contents is a cure wholly vegetable; that it is a 
remedy for everything from cholera-infantum to cancer — from 
scrofula to cerebro-spinal meningitis. It is probably a remedy 
like the patent medicine told of by a prominent Democratic resi- 
dent of the banks of the Hudson River, who said that an old man 
ready for the grave, after taking a few of the pills, came out young 
and new and robust, and had enough of pills left over to make a 
good-sized dog " [Laughter]. * * * 

The following are excerpts from his speech of 
April 24, 1879, upon the bill making appropriations 
for support of the army. 

Until now no madness of party, no audacity or desperation, or 
sinister, sectional, or partisan design, has ever ventured on such 
an attempt as has recently come to pass in the two Houses of 
Congress. The proceeding I mean to characterize, if misunder- 
stood anywhere, is misunderstood here. One listening to addresses 
delivered to the Senate during this debate, as it is called, must 
think that the majority is arraigned, certainly that the majority 
wishes to seem and is determined to seem arraigned, merely for 
insisting that provisions appropriating money to keep the Govern- 



THE ARMY BILL. 



593 



ment alive, and provisions, not in themselves improper, relating to 
other matters, may be united in the same bill. With somewhat 
of monotonous and ostentatious iteration we have been asked 
whether incorporating general legislation in apppropriation bills is 
revolution or revolutionary ? No one in my hearing has ever so 
contended. 

* * * X- * * * 

In the case before us, the design to make appropriations hinge 
and depend upon the destruction of certain laws, is plain on the 
face of the bills before us — the bill now pending, and another one 
on our tables. The same design was plain on the face of the bills 
sent us at the last session. The very fact that the sections un- 
covering the ballot-box to violence and fraud are not, and never 
have been, separately^presented, but are thrust into appropriation 
bills, discloses and proves- a belief, if not a knowledge, that in a 
separate bill the Executive would not approve them. Moreover, 
both Houses have rung with the assertion that the Executive would 
not approve in a separate measure the overflow of existing safe- 
guards of the ballot-box, and that should he refuse to give his ap- 
proval to appropriations and an overthrow of those safeguards 
linked together, no appropriations should be made. 

The plot and the purpose then, is by duress to compel the 
Executive to give up his convictions, his duty and his oath, as 
the price to be paid a political party for allowing the Government 
to live! Whether the bills be united or divided, is mere method 
and form. The substance in either form is the same, and the 
plot, if persisted in, will bury its aiders and abettors in opprobrium, 
and will leave a buoy on the sea of time warning political mari- 
ners to keep aloof from a treacherous channel in which a political 
party foundered and went down. 

****** ^ 

The Army bill now pending is not, in its political features, 
the bill tendered us at the last session a few days ago; it is not 
the same bill then insisted on as the ultimatum of the majority. 
The bill as it comes to us now, condemns its predecessor as crude 
and objectionable. It was found to need alteration. It did need 
alteration badly, and those who lately insisted on it as it was, in- 
sist on it now as it then was not. A grave proviso has been added 



394 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

to save the right of the President to aid a State gasping in the 
throes of rebellion or invasion and calling for help. As the pro- 
vision stood when thrust upon us first and last at the recent ses- 
sion, it would have punished as a felon the President of the United 
States, the General of the Army, and others, for attempting to 
obey the Constitution of the United States, and two ancient acts 
of Congress, one of them signed by George Washington. Shorn 
of this absurdity, the bill as it now stands, should it become a 
law, will be the first enactment of its kind that ever found its way 
into the statutes of the United States. A century, with all its ac- 
tivities and party strifes, with all its passionate discords, with all 
its expedients for party advantage, with all its wisdom and its 
folly, with all its patriotism and its treason, has never till now 
produced a Congressional majority which deemed such a statute 
fit to be enacted. 

Let me state the meaning of the amendments proposed under 
guise of enlarging liberty on election-day — that day of days when 
order, peace and security for all, as well as liberty, should reign. 
The amendments declare in plain legal effect that, no matter 
what the exigency may be, no matter what violence or carnage 
may run riot and trample down right and life, no matter what mob 
brutality may become master, if the day be election day, any 
officer or person — civil, military, or naval, from the President 
down — who attempts to interfere to prevent or quell violence by 
the aid of national soldiers, or armed men not soldiers, shall be 
punished, and maybe fined $5,000 and imprisoned for five years. 
This is the law we are required to set up. Yes, not only to leave 
murderous ruffianism untouched, but to invite it into action by 
assurances of safety in advance. 

In the city of New York, all the thugs and shoulder-hitters 
and repeaters, all the carriers of slung-shot, dirks and bludgeons, 
all the fraternity of the bucket-shops, the rat-pits, the hells antl 
the slums, all the graduates of the nurseries of modern so-called 
Democracy [laughter], all those who employ and incite them, 
from King's Bridge to the Battery, are to be told in advance that 
on the day when the million people around them choose their 
members of the national Legislature, no matter what God-daring 
or man-hurting enormities they may commit, no matter what they 



A STIRRING SPEECH. 



395 



do, nothing that they can do will meet with the slightest resist- 
ance from any national soldier or armed man clothed with na- 
tional authority. 

Another bill, already on our tables, strikes down even police 
officers, armed or unarmed, of the United States. 

In South Carolina, in Louisiana, in Mississippi, and in the 
other States where colored citizens are counted to swell the repre- 
sentation in Congress, and then robbed of their ballots and dis- 
missed from the political sun — in all such States every rifle club 
and white league and murderous band, and every tissue ballot- 
box stuffer, night-rider and law-breaker, is to be told that they may. 
turn national elections into a bloody farce, that they may choke 
the whole proceeding with force and fraud and blood, and that 
the nation shall not confront them with one armed man. State 
troops, whether under the name of rifle clubs or white leagues, or 
any other, armed with the muskets of the United States, may con- 
stitute the mob, may incite the mob, but the national arm is to 
be tied and palsied. 

******* 

Repeating, ballot-box stuffing, ruffianism and false countmg 
decided everything. Tweed made the election officers, and the 
election officers were corrupt. In 1868 thirty thousand votes were 
falsely added to the Democratic majority in the cities of New 
York and Brooklyn alone. Taxes and elections were the mere 
spoil and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany Hall. Assess- 
ments, exactions and exemptions were made the bribes and the 
penalties of political submission. Usurpation and fraud inaugu- 
rated a carnival of corrupt disorder ; and obscene birds without 
number swooped down to the harvest, and gorged themselves on 
every side in plunder and spoliation. Wrongs and usurpations, 
springing from the pollution and desecration of the ballot-box, 
stalked high-headed in the public way. The courts and the ma- 
chinery of justice were impotent in the presence of culprits too 
great to be punished. 

The act of 1870 came in to throttle such abuses. It was not 
born without throes and pangs. It passed the Senate after a day 
and a night which rang with Democratic maledictions and foul as- 
persions. 



396 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

In the autumn of that year an election was held for the choice 
of representatives in Congress. I see more than one friend near 
me who, for himself and for others, has reason even unto this day 
to remember that election and the apprehension which preceded 
it. It was the first time the law of 1870 had been put in force. 
Resistance was openly counseled. Democratic newspapers in 
New York advised that the officers of the law be pitched into the 
river. Disorder was afoot. Men, not wanting in bravery, and 
not Republicans, dreaded the day. Bloodshed, arson, riot, were 
feared. Ghastly spectacles were still fresh in memory. The 
draft riots had spread terror which had never died, and strong men 
shuddered when they remembered the bloody assizes of the Dem- 
ocratic party. They had seen men and women, blind with party 
hate, dizzy and drunk with party madness, stab and burn and 
revel in murder and in mutilating the dead. * * * Remem- 
bering such sickening scenes, and dreading their repetition, they 
asked the President to protect them — to protect them with the 
beak and claw of national power. Instantly the unkenneled packs 
of party barked in vengeful chorus. Imprecations, maledictions 
and threats were hurled at Grant ; but with that splendid courage 
which never blanched in battle, which never quaked before clamor, 
with that matchless self-poise which did not desert him even 
when a continent beyond the sea rose and uncovered before him 
[applause in the galleries], he responded in the orders which it 
has pleased the honorable Senator from Delaware to read. The 
election thus protected was the fairest, the freest, the most secure 
a generation had seen. When, two years afterward. New York 
came to crown Grant with her vote, his action in protecting her 
chief city on the Ides of November, 1870, was not forgotten. 
When next New York has occasion ro record her judgment of the 
services of Grant, his action in 1870 touching peace in the city of 
New York will not be hidden away by those who espouse him 
wisely. [Applause in the galleries.] 

******* 

Mr. President, the Republican party everywhere wants peace 
and prosperity — peace and prosperity in the South as much and 
as sincerely as elsewhere. Disguising the truth will not bring 
peace and prosperity. Soft phrases will not bring peace. " Fair 



WHAT THE SOUTH NEEDS. 



\97 



wor-ds butter no parsnips." We hear a great deal of loose, flabby 
talk about "fanning dying embers," ''rekindling smoldering 
fires," and so on. Whenever the plain truth is spoken, these 
vv,j unctious monitions, with a Peter Parley benevolence, fall copi- 
ously upon us. This lullaby and hush have been, in my belief, a 
mistake from the beginning. It has misled the South and misled 
the North. In Andrew Johnson's time a convention was worked 
up at Philadelphia, and men were brought from the North and 
South for ecstasy and gush. A man from Massachusetts and a 
man from South Carolina locked arms and walked into the Con- 
vention arm in arm, and sensation and credulity palpitated and 
clapped their hands, and thought an universal solvent had been 
found. Serenades were held at which " Dixie " was played. Later 
on, anniversaries of battles fought in the War of Independence 
were made occasions, by men from the North and men from the 
South, for emotional, dramatic, hugging ceremonies. General 
Sherman, I remember, attended one of them; and I remember, 
also, that, with the bluntness of a soldier and the wisdom and 
hard sense of a statesman, he plainly cautioned all concerned not 
to be carried away and not to be fooled. But many have been 
fooled, and, being fooled, have helped to swell the Democratic 
majorities which now display themselves before the public eye. 

Of all such effusive demonstrations I have this to say: honest, 
serious convictions are not ecstatic or emotional. Grave affairs 
and lasting purposes do not express or vent themselves in honeyed 
phrase or sickly sentimentality, rhapsody or profuse professions. 

This is as true of political as of religious duties. The Divine 
, Master tells us, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, 
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he'that doeth the 
will of my Father which is in heaven." * * * 

What the South needs is to heal, build, mend, plant, sow — in 
short, to go to work. Invite labor; cherish it; do not drive it 
out. Quit proscription, both for opinion's sake and for color's 
sake. Reform it altogether. I know there are difficulties in the 
way. I know there is natural repugnance in the way; but drop 
passion, drop sentiment, which signifies naught, and let the ma- 
terial prosperity and civilization of your land advance. Do not 
give so much energy, so much restless, sleepless activity, to an 



398 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

attempt so soon to get possession once more, and dominate and 
rule the country. There is room enough at the national board; 
and it is not needed, it is not decorous, plainly speaking, that the 
South should be the MacGregor at the table, and that the head 
of the table should be wherever he sits. For a good many rea- 
sons, it is not worth while to insist upon it. 

Mr. President, one of Rome's famous legends stands in these 
words: "Let what each man thinks of the Republic be written 
on his brow." I have spoken in the spirit of this injunction. 
Meaning offence to no man, and holding ill-will to no man, be- 
cause he comes from the South or because he differs with me in po- 
litical opinion, I have spoken frankly, but with malice toward none. 

This session, and the bill pending, are acts in a partisan and 
political enterprise. This debate, begun after a caucus had de- 
fined and clenched the position of every man in the majority, has 
not been waged to convince anybody here. It has resounded 
to fire the Democratic heart, to sound a blast to the cohorts of 
party, to beat the long-roll, and set the squadrons in the field. 
That is its object, as plainly to be seen as the ultimate object of 
the attempted overthrow of laws. 

Political speeches having been thus ordained, I have discussed 
political themes, and with ill-will to no portion of the country, but 
good-will toward every portion of it, I have with candor spoken 
somewhat of my thoughts of the duties and dangers of the hour. 
[Applause on the floor and in the galleries.] 

On June 20, 1879, in his speech in the Senate of 
the United .States, he said: 

* * * History, tradition and fable have, during these 
twelve stormy weeks, alike been exhausted to produce an instance 
of Republican interference with an election by military force. 

No instance has been found — not one. Kentucky in 1865 was 
not such an instance. Kentucky was a border State, a State ly- 
ing between contending forces and sections during the greatest 
war of modern times. It was the boast of one of Kentucky's 
Senators that her quota in both armies was full. In 1865 that 
grfeat body of the men of Kentucky, who had fought in the 



GENERAL LEES INVASION. 



399 



armies of rebellion for the overthrow of the Government, the 
Government having triumphed and the attempt to overthrow it 
having failed, came back to Kentucky to participate in the affairs 
and elections of that State. 

Abraham Lincoln was President — the same President who, on 
the day when Robert E. Lee marched his army into Pennsylvania, 
was denounced by the Democrats of Pennsylvania in State Con- 
vention assembled. On the day, or the day before, Lee invaded 
Pennsylvania, with the soil of their Commonwealth quaking under 
the tramp of armed men, marching under the uplifted banners of 
revolt, striving, without provocation and without cause, to prostrate 
the fairest, freest, greatest Government mankind had seen, with 
an army bent upon this fell purpose invading their State, the 
Democratic party — the same party which, we have heard from the 
Senator from Georgia (Mr. Hill), saved the Union — assembled in 
delegated State Convention in Pennsylvania, and denounced Lin- 
coln, and the measures by which he and those with him were en- 
gaged in an attempt to crush that bloody, treasonable attempt. 
Seeing the condition of things in Kentucky in 1865, Mr. Lincoln 
issued, and authorized generals of the Union Army to issue, proc- 
lamations and orders which placed portions of Kentucky virtual- 
ly under martial law. It was at that time, with civil authority 
temporarily suspended, and swarming with those who had fought 
in the armies of rebellion, that Kentucky became the theatre of 
occurrences of which her distinguished Senator complains. 

The speech nominating General Grant for a 
third term is one of Senator ConkHng's best ef- 
forts. It will be found in the Chapter on the 
Chicago Convention. 

While addressing the Committee of Investiga- 
tion of the New York Senate, March 24, 1886, Mr. 
Conkling said: 

But let the Broadway Surface Railroad Company go scot-free; 
let it flaunt its stolen millions, let it triumph and flourish in its 



400 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

rottenness and shameful venality, let the glamour of impunity 
and success cover its festering offences, and then the rising and 
the risen generation of honest corporations and honest men may 
well tremble at the prospect. Before the tribunal of public con- 
science, before the enlightened judgment of mankind, these stolen 
millions will buy less forgiveness than the pebble at the bottom 
of a beggar's grave. 

In the suit of Farnsworth vs. The Western Union 
Telegraph Company (July lo, 1866) he remarked: 

As the grave is the end of all life, so the Western Union Com- 
pany is the end of all telegraph property and enterprise every- 
where — at least on this continent. The need and object was to 
throttle and beat down all opposition in the present and terrify it 
in the future, so that a giant monopoly, which, like a mammoth 
devil-fish, already holds a hemisphere in its iron clutch, may con- 
tinue and fatten on unchecked exactions wrung from the whole 
people as dividends on watered stock, chiefly by fewer men than 
now sit in the jury box. 

No man, whoever he may be, would have dared such an under- 
taking in his own name. No man is so independently rich, none 
so independently solvent, none so reckless of public opinion and 
of his own fate, as to have the hardihood to present himself with- 
out cloak or mask as such a stabber of common right. No name 
but the name, no power but the power, no cloak but the cloak, of 
a great corporation was panoply-concealment enough against the 
odium and indignation which would have focused upon and blast- 
ed any single individual who openly took such domineering 
effrontery on himself. 

We now come to a comparison of Mr. Conkling 
with other orators of his time. A very competent 
witness has lately written the author as follows: 

Thomas Corwin was the superior of Roscoe Conkling in the 
brilliancy and grandeur of his imagination; William Pinkney 
and William Wirt in the glitter of their pyrotechnics; but, taking 



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COMPARED WITH OTHER ORATORS. 40I 

Mr. Conkliiig all around, and leaving out his proclivity for sar- 
casm, I think him, by far, the grandest forensic orator I ever 
heard. I did not object to his sarcasm, especially as I never felt 
it, but I allude to it (now that he is dead and is passing into his- 
tory) by way of saying that, whilst that element of his forensic work 
displayed immense power, and was perhaps one of the most for- 
midable qualities of his public speaking, yet, by reason of its ef- 
fect upon those in opposition to him in the House and Senate, its 
aggregate effect was to lessen the influence of his speeches upon 
the votes of the body where he so pre-eminently shone. 

In 1886 one of the questions of the Chautauqua 
school was. Who is the greatest Hving orator? 
Roscoe ConkHng and Castelar received the lar- 
gest number of votes, or answers. 

The venerable Hannibal Hamlin, the only living 
ex- Vice-President, in a recent letter to the author, 
says : (sqq facsimile.^ 

A well-known American who had listened to all 
of pur leading orators, said: "I have heard * '^' '''"" 
(mentioning several of them), but somehow they 
seem 'light-waisted' compared with Mr. Conkling." 

The crowded galleries of the Senate, when it 
was known that Roscoe Conkling would have the 
floor, bear testimony to his popularity as an orator. 

In speaking of Mr. ConkHng, the late Montgom- 
ery Blair stated to a relative of the author that 
during the last forty years he had personally 
known all of the prominent public men of the 
United States, including Calhoun, Clay, Cor win, 

Webster and Preston; but that he (ConkHng) pos- 
26 



402 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

sessed more versatility of acquirement and talent 
than any one of them, and that he was the superior 
of each and all of them. 

In looking over the short list of American ora- 
tors — Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, Fisher 
Ames, Aaron Burr, Henry Clay, William Wirt, 
George McDufifie, William Pinkney, Daniel Web- 
ster, Robert Y. Hayne, Sergeant S. Prentiss, J. 
MacPherson Berrien, William C. Preston, Rufus 
Choate, Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, 
John C. Calhoun, Thomas Corwin, Henry Winter 
Davis, Edward Everett, W^endell Phillips and 
Henry Ward Beecher, not to mention the living 
^ — it would seem, from what has been said, that 
Roscoe Conkling, as an orator, has had no supe- 
rior in the New World.'"' 

Yet his fame, like that of other orators, must 
rest mainly on tradition. Much of the reputation 
of a speaker depends upon those glowing thoughts 
and phrases which are frequently struck out in 
the warmth of debate, and which even the orator 
himself is afterward unable to recall. 

One of the secrets of Senator Conkling's success 
as an orator was his tenacious memory, to which 
we have already referred; but the following rem- 
iniscence by a townsman may further interest the 
reader: 

*The author strives to give an unprejudiced opinion. 



HIS MARVELOUS MEMORY. 



403 



Mr. Conkling's power of memory was most marvelous. What- 
ever his mind received seemed to be imprinted upon it as upon 
an indelible and sensitive plate, which the lapse of time could 
neither efface nor dim. As occasion required, from this store- 
house of memory, in its original distinctness, what he had treas- 
ured up was presented and available for effective use. To this 
rare faculty he was indebted, in extemporaneous speaking, for 
his power in marshaling facts and arguments upon whatever 
subject was engaging his attention. Never at a loss for the most 
suitable and impressive language with which to clothe his fast- 
flowing thoughts, he was able to take possession of his audience, 
and often to mold and sway it under the irresistible flow of his 
powerful utterances. During the early years of his political life, 
in the city of his home, whenever he appeared upon the platform 
the audience-room rang with applauding welcome, and every eye 
and ear was fixed with silent intent upon the young orator, whom 
all loved to hear and to honor. 

His memory of faces was none the less extraordinary. A 
person whom he had seen but three times in thirty years, and 
whose name or business he never had known, casually meeting 
him again in 18S6, Mr. Conkling recalled the several occasions 
where he had seen him, and the attending circumstances, at 
Utica, Washington and in a railroad car. 

The writer calls to mind a notable instance of his power of 
memory. It was on the occasion of a Sunday afternoon visit, 
when the conversation turned upon Moses, the Jewish law-giver. 
Mr. Conkling, in his own eloquent manner, expressed his venera- 
tion for this inspired statesman of Israel, and great admiration of 
his character, wisdom and genius. Then, referring to a poem on 
" The Burial of Moses," he asked his visitor if he recalled it. Re- 
ceiving a negative reply, throwing back his head and shutting his 
eyes, he began to recite it, slowly drawing it out of his memory 
until he had repeated the whole poem. 

In answer to a question, he remarked that he had never seen 
it, but that it was read to him some year or two before, and from 
that he had imperfectly (as he said) repeated it. He recited, from 
memory also, pages of his favorite authors. 

Often have we listened to his word-portraits of the prominent 



404 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 



characters of the day, with whose personal and political histories 
in detail he appeared to be perfectly familiar. But in all such 
conversations we do not remember that on any occasion he used 
language that was not kind, conciliatory and just. 

Concerning the Senator's versatility for public 
discussion, Samuel Wilkeson once wrote: 

In the debates of the House and Senate upon the great meas- 
ures of legislation which accompanied the war, and which fol- 
lowed the peace in the reconstruction of the rebel States, and the 
complete restoration of the Union, he was a conscientious Repre- 
sentative, anxious to devise what was wisest and best for the pub- 
lic good. He never addressed either House for the sake of dis- 
play. He never made a speech which had not a defined, useful 
public purpose, and to this he always brought earnest feeling and 
careful preparation. The printed records of the proceedings of 
Congress during his service show that the range of his work was 
as complete as it was immense. It comprehended the Supreme 
Court of the United States, Finance, the Conduct of the War, the 
Currency, the Pacific Railways, the Public Credit, Emancipation, 
National Banking, the Basis of Representation, Taxation, Ten- 
ure of Civil Office, Revenue, the Bankrupt Law, the Louisiana 
Question, Postal Telegraphy, the French Spoliations, Harbor 
Improvements, the Alabama Claims, the Judiciary, the Pension 
Laws, the Geneva Award, the Revision of the United States 
Laws, Territorial Judges, the Law of Legislatures, the Constitu- 
tion and Presidential Elections — indeed, every important Amer- 
ican interest which was the subject of federal care and legisla- 
tion. His speeches on all of them were masterly and exhaustive. 
On the most important of them they were not equaled by the par- 
liamentary efforts of any man of his day, and were rivaled, if 
equaled, only by the historic orations of Hayne, Webster and Clay. 

It transpires, from the secret sessions of the Senate, in which 
debates arc not reported, that the greatest speeches of his life 
have been made by Mr. Conkling in that body with closed doors, 
with no other audience than the Senators in their seats. His im- 
mense work as a parliamentary debater and advocate did not 



EXAMPLES OF WIT AND REPARTEE. 



405 



cease with the close of the sessions of Congress. It was kept 
up during its vacations. He was the man in the State of New 
York on whom was put the labor of reanimating the courage and 
stiffening the endurance of its people in the darkest hours of the 
war. The meetings of the Loyal League clubs, popular assem- 
blages in counties, and great public meetings in the principal 
cities to sustain the Government and preserve the integrity and 
supremacy of the party which was administering it, demanded his 
presence and his oratory. He always complied with this demand, 
cheerfully sacrificing his comfort, his professional interests and 
his health. The completeness of the sacrifice of his interests is 
measured by his proud and indignant retort in personal contro- 
versy in the Senate, in the Caldwell election debate: I uwuld 710 
more take pay for making a political speech than I would take pay 
for attending a funeral, or for signi?ig a petition for a pardon, or 
a recommendation for a7i appointment to office. 

Goethe has said: "Nothing is more significant 
of men's character than what they find laughable." 

As illustrations of Roscoe Conkling's satires and 
repartees we give the following: 

In his speech of April 16, i860, Mr. Conkling 
called a Democratic National Convention a na- 
tional plaza de toros. On the same occasion he 
referred to a Democratic member as beinor " A 
communicant of that Church of which Mr. Bu- 
chanan is the visible head." 

In defending a man who had been indicted for 
forgery he spoke of " the double distilled crimes 
of perjury and forgery." 

Referring to a snob, he once said, " Intoxicated 
by his consciousness of his own importance." 

When_ Mr. Conkling was a young man he was 



406 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

once interrupted during a speech at Utica by a 
fellow who bawled out: " Do you want me to 
marry a black wench?" He pretended not to hear 
the remark distinctly, and said, with great polite- 
ness of manner: " Will the gentleman who asked 
me a question have the kindness to come forward 
and repeat it?" The Republicans who were pres- 
ent cried out! "Turn him out! turn him out!" 
" Oh no, don't turn him out," said Mr. Conkling; 
" I'm sure the gentleman asked some question 
which deserves a reply; let him come forward." 
So they pushed the fellow forward to the middle 
of the hall, where he puffed out his chest and said 
defiantly: '• Do you want me to marry a black 
woman? " Mr. Conkling looked the man all over 
carefully for about two minutes. It was so silent 
that one could have heard a pin drop. Then he 
said, with a drawl: " Do I want you to marry a 
black woman? No, I can't say that I do — I have 
too much compassion for the black woman." 

During a county convention a well-known edi- 
tor, who was somewhat opposed to Mr. Conkling's 
nomination, fearing he might be defeated, ap- 
pointed himself a committee of one to visit the 
candidate at his hotel for the purpose of suggest- 
ing to him that he should decline the nomina- 
tion. In reply, Mr. Conkling told his caller that 
his advice was anticipated, and valued for all 



HE IS A WORKINGMAN. 



40; 



it was worth, and then plainly intimated to him 
that it was not needed. Thereupon the editor, 
taking his hat, stated that there was nothing- left 
for him to do but to leave. To which Mr. Conk- 
ling replied, " That is a sensible conclusion," and 
bowed him out. 

While addressing a mass meeting of working- 
men during one of his Congressional campaigns, 
he said, in reply to a harsh criticism : '' I attend 
this meeting /^^ri'?^^/^^ to call. I am a workingman, 
and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. It 
does not seem to me that it makes any difference 
whether this perspiration is on the outside or inside 
of my head." 

He once said : " A thief breaks into your house, 
steals your watch, and goes to Sing Sing. The 
newspaper man breaks into the casket which con- 
tains your most precious treasure — your reputation 
— and goes unscathed before the law." 

In February, 1870, Senator Conkling took an 
active part in the debate concerning the ninth 
census of the United States. On the ninth instant 
he provoked much merriment in comments upon 
the classification of the precious metals, wherein, 
among other things, he said : 

Alas for the products of mines! But the melancholy end is 
not yet. A sadder reality still was left untold by the Senator; 
How will the patriotic hearts of the Senators from Nevada swell 



4o8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

with agonizing emotion when I point them to the place dedicated 
to the precious metals in the schedules of the House. ** Hung 
be the heavens with black!" "Tell it not in Gath, publish it' 
not in the streets of Askelon," that in the scheme advocated by 
the Senator from Massachusetts, the gold and silver of Nevada, 
the young bride of the Union, are consigned to a place side by 
side with "women's corsets," and "ready-made clothing." 
[Great laughter.] Oh that I could bind up the gashed bosoms 
of the Senators from Nevada! I can only console them in the 
words of Denmark's wayward prince, that these are " but the 
trappings and the suits of woe." [Laughter.] 

In a speech during the campaign of 1870 Mr. 
Conkhng remarked: 

I believe it was the Queen of Sheba who could not>appreci- 
ate the glory of Solomon until she went into a certain part of his 
temple. If any one wants to see the glory of Democracy, let 
him go to the city of New York, where, in a term of fifteen years, 
the taxes have been increased from three million dollars to twenty- 
three million dollars, amounting, at present, to a tax of twenty- 
five dollars annually for every being on the island. 

During his speech of January 11, 1872, on the 
" One-Term Dogma," he said : 

A Presidential canvass is upon us, and the dominant party is 
likely to support for re-election the present Chief Magistrate. 
Does this fact throw any light upon the portentous preamble and 
the solemn resolution before us ? 

He must be blind indeed who does not see in this proposed 
amendment a device, a make-weight, an expedient to affect the re- 
election of President Grant. 

Ostrich-like, it buries its head; but, ostrich like, it is big with 
exposure. It wears a veil of preamble and a fig-leaf of benevo- 
lent postponement. It tries to hide its real self under the words : 
" This amendment shall not take effect until after the fourth of 
March, 1S73." 



PERSONAL COURAGE. 



409 



Our attention was especially called to these words. What are 
they for ? Why are they there ? They pretend to give us respite 
or reprieve. 

In February, 1872, Roscoe Conkling took a 
prominent part in the debate regarding the sales of 
arms to French agents. The Senator from Mis- 
souri, among other things, said : " On the paths of 
duty which I have followed I have met men more 
dangerous than the Senator (Mr. Conkling), and if 
there were a thousand of them my heart would not 
quail ;" to which Mr. Conkling replied as follows : 

Mr. President: Personal courage, if it be true, does not blurt 
or swagger ; personal courage is not froth ; and men eminent for 
the intrepidity and boldness of their character do not strut or 
perch themselves upon an eminence and boast of it, especially 
where it is not challenged. I have no wish — far from it — to put 
my courage or my dangerous capacities in hopeless competition 
with those of the distinguished Senator. I thought that far, very 
far fetched, and cheap indeed, was the attempt to convince the gal- 
leries that the amendment was intended to intimidate the Senator 
or to shock or overcome his personal courage. Equally far- 
fetched was the attempt to insinuate that any want of personal 
courtesy attended the offer of this amendment. Equally prepos- 
terous was the assumption of the Senator that he stood too high 
to make it proper that investigation should ascend to him. 

He also said, concerning Mr. Sumner's vain de- 
nials : 

The honorable Senator (Sumner, of Massachusetts) says he 
kept his design locked up in the depths of his own consciousness. 
He revealed it to no one. Let me read his words : 

" At any rate, I know that no human being had reason to sup- 
pose I was to move in it until I did." 



4IO LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Here, Mr. President, is a remarkable phenomenon. The sub- 
stance of this portentous preamble and resolution (charging viola- 
tion of neutrality by selling old ordnance) was published in Bos- 
ton, Chicago and Cincinnati before it was presented here, with an 
announcement that it was to be presented on the next day. Can 
anything be found in clairvoyance or psychology to exceed this ? 
Burke said the age of chivalry had passed away, but clearly the 
age of miracles is still upon us. 

We know that the honorable Senator is very near the press; 
but there is nothing in the nearness of Damon and Pythias, nor 
of Romeo and Juliet which comes so closely to absolute oneness 
as this. I might borrow the language of a hymn, and say of the 
newspaper men and the Senator : 

They know the words he means to speak 
Ere from his opening lips they break. 

[Laughter.] 

It is marvelous that such silence, such reticence, such reluc- 
tance, should not have kept this huge affair from being darkly 
hinted in political circles for months, and from being recorded in 
newspapers before it broke upon the ears of the Senate. It is 
possible that, as men engaged in daring and perilous ventures 
sometimes cast lots as to which shall do the deed, so there was, 
down to a recent period, some doubt as to who should bear the 
match that was to fire the fuse that was to explode the bomb that 
was to destroy a dreaded Presidential candidate (Grant) and dis- 
able all who sustain him. The cast of characters may not have 
been agreed on nor the heavy part given to the Senator till late. 

The following is an extract from his remarks on 
the "Inflation" bill, February 19, 1874: 

Before taking my seat, however, I deem it due to frankness 
not to neglect to add my voice of warning and protest against all 
schemes for wholesale issues of irredeemable paper money. Con- 
scious of the many things taught by the science of finance which 
I do not know, there is one thing which I think I do know, hav- 
ing learned it from the saddened and blackened annals of many 
epochs. Reason and experience convince me that we shall launch 



A REPLY TO SENATOR THVRMAN. \\ I 

Government and people on a sea without shore or botto^jhen 
we legislate the nation out upon a sea of unum.ted .rredeemable 

''^"I nT T;t to be paid or redeemed is a promise made to be 

' r.A^ f^ v,P broken is a lie. And a lie win 
broken. A promise made to be oroKen li^ a. uc. 

upset anything from an apple-cart to an empire. 
' Paper money not to be paid or redeemed is a falsehood and a 
fraud. It can never be true, and therefore it can never be right 
or safe. * * * 

When Senator Conkling was defending Gen- 
eral Sheridan. January 28, 1875, for his official con- 
duct in Louisiana, the following dialogue between 
him and Senator Thurman occurred: 

Mr Thurman: Does the Senator want an answer to 'his 
question to me ? I have about half a dozen noted. I think I 
shall have to take another time. 

Mr. Conkling: My honorable fnend from Ohio had one 
whole day. I might ask him, "Insatiate archer, would not one 

'"^7lr 'nurman : I only wish to know, when the Senator turns 
around and addresses me, as he has done half a dozen times since 
I have been in, whether he expects me to respond at once ? 

Mr Conkling : Mr. President, when I speak of the law I turn 
to the 'senator as a Mussulman turns toward Mecca. [Laugh- 
ter 1 I beg the honorable Senator to understand that I look to 
him only as I would look to the common law of England the 
world's most copious volume of jurisprudence. [Laughter.J 

This example of a bright repartee has run the 
rounds of the press. 

In an out-door speech at Rochester, the follow- 
ing incident took place: 

The meeting was held in the afternoon and was 
of tremendous size. The rural districts were well 



412 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

represented. Mr. Conkling had been speaking 
but a few minutes when he was, apparently, struck 
with the idea of getting a text out of the audience. 
There was, he said, a great outcry for "a change." 
Many people were saying that the Republican 
party had been in power too long, and it was time 
for " a chancre." Now he would be much obliged 
if some one within hearing would tell him why 
there should be a change — why a change was 
wanted. " Frankly," he said, " I want to know 
about this, and I should like to talk about it. Why 
do we want a change ?" An individual near by 
spoke up and said, " We want a change, for one 
thing, to close up the chasm between capital and 
labor." He was a knowing-looking little man from 
the country, probably the political oracle of his vil- 
lage, and a smart little woman was hanging on his 
arm. " I thank you, my friend," said Mr. Conkling, 
" but did you say a change is needed to close up the 
chasm between capital and labor ? " " Yes," burst 
out the little woman, "he did say so, and it will 
trouble you to answer him, too !" She doubtless 
thought that her little man could confute the Sena- 
tor if he had only half a chance. Senator Conkling 
again bowed his thanks, and then went on to speak 
about the proposed " change." He showed that 
there was no chasm between capital and labor, that 
their interests were common, and that the most 



"A BLOOD Y SAR-CASM," 



413 



dangerous of the country's enemies were the men 
who were striving- to convince the outside world 
that there was an issue between the two great forces 
of our growth and prosperity. With rasping irony 
and biting sarcasm he dilated upon the theme. He 
had been searching everywhere to find a man who 
could give a reason for the " change " demanded. 
At length he had discovered one. In that prosper- 
ous city of Rochester a man was found willing to 
stand up and say we must have a change — to close 
up the chasm between capital and labor — a chasm 
which had no existence save in the mind's eye of 
this great philosopher, whom he was anxious to 
secure as his guide, and his friend also. Then, 
having covered the countryman all over with 
ridicule, amid the laughter of his vast audience 
he leaned over the platform and, stretching out 
his long arm toward the victim, he said, with 
mock cordiality: " My friend, let us shake hands 
across this bloody sar-casm ! " 

As to the vote in South Carolina, November 26, 
1877, he remarked: 

Philosophy! I should not dare to enter that domain with the 
Senator, and if even in geography he should take me to task, I 
should find myself in the condition of the girl rejected on a com- 
petitive examination as a copyist, because she could not tell the 
three principal rivers that empty into the Caspian Sea, and could 
not define and locate the isothermal line. 



414 -i/^-fi' A^D LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Concerning a railroad committee bill, April 4, 
1878, Mr. Conkling said: 

Mr. President: Analogies are always dangerous. Illustra- 
tions have no value at all unless they are true. A caricature may 
sometimes bring out a likeness, but a caricature always distorts 
and destroys a legal argument proceeding by parallels. 

During a speech in the State campaign of 1879 
Mr. Conkling was interrupted by a laboring man. 
He had saved a little money, and was very much 
interested in the subject of resumption, which 
then occupied public attention. When he rose to 
ask a question, the poor fellow was frightened by 
his own voice and became greatly confused. The 
cry of " Put him out ! " at once arose, to which Mr. 
Conkling replied, " Oh no ! don't put him out; let 
him remain, and either we will let in a little light, 
or he will let out a great deal of darkness." 

When speaking of influencing others Mr. Conk- 
ling once said: " Whoever fails to take account of 
the spaniel-like element of human nature will make 
a great many mistakes." Referring to the common 
habit of politicians of making pledges, he remarked: 
" There is great wisdom in making no promises." 

Regarding the bill to take the tenth census, on 
February 6, 1879, he remarked : 

Unbridled discretion is not wholesome in government. * * * 
It is too broad a power, and it should not be slack-wound or loose- 
twisted, but it should be stated with particularity. 



TREA TV S TIP ULA TIOiVS A RE BIND ING. 4 1 5 

Concerning the Chinese Treaty, February 14, 
1879, he remarked: 

We are not dealing with England, we are not dealing with a 
nationality whose " march is o'er the mountain wave," nor whose 
" home is on the deep;" we are not dealing with one whose ships 
and parks of artillery and disciplined soldiers and means to con- 
quer command the respect, and also another feeling, of all the 

nations of the earth. 

^ * * * -x- * * 

I am not going to enter into an ethical dissertation on the 
question of the right a power has to rend its treaty stipulations. 
I have heard it affirmed that if the nature of a stipulation was ex- 
ecutory merely, it was at the convenience and the option of every 
power to betray it or observe it. I do not believe that. 

I do not believe that might makes right. I do not believe that 
an individual or a nation, having entered into a solemn compact, 
has a right, by mere convenience and self-interests, to graduate its 
duty to observe it. It was a splendid burst of eloquence in a 
dramatic poem when a hero was made to say: 

" Before I'd break the word I have the power to keep, 
I'd lose the life I have the power to save." 

That was not the doctrine of a man who believed that con- 
venience and self-interest, the mere sordid promptings of a pref- 
erence, is the best rule of human or natural action. 

* -Sf * * -sf ^ * 

I once heard of a distinguished democrat in Illinois (Mr. 
Lincoln used to tell me of it) who believed, and Mr. Lincoln said 
he did himself, that he had often succeeded by the sheer brass, 
if it was brass, and the sheer stupidity, if it was stupidity, of re- 
iterating a thing which had nothing in the world to do with the 
question, ignoring persistently the answer which had been made to 
it, but convincing a crowd he was right all the time. 

On March i, 1879, during the debate upon a 
pension bill, the following encounter between 
Senators Thurman and Conkling took place. 



4l6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Mr. Thurman : I do not wish to detain the Senate when it is 
nearly daylight, as it is now, but I wish to make a remark, to 
which I invite the attention of the Senator from New York. 

The Senator opposes the amendment under consideration be- 
cause it embraces too much. That is one ground — because it 
embraces too much; because, as he says, it is all-embracmg. 
His objections to it, then, are twofold — first, tiiat it is too compre- 
hensive in its provisions, and second, that it is ambiguous. That 
implies that if its ambiguity were removed and if its comprehen- 
siveness were reduced, the Senator might be disposed to vote for 
it, because, if under no circumstances the Senator would vote for 
pensions to the soldiers of the Mexican War, if in no form or 
shape he would vote for a proposition of that kind, then it is a 
matter of no importance to him whether this is comprehensive or 
not, or whether it is ambiguous or not. Being opposed to the 
proposition in toto, he need not trouble himself with the particu- 
lars. Therefore, when he criticises it upon the ground that it is 
ambiguous or that it is too comprehensive, his remarks imply that 
if it were made clear and were reduced to proper proportions it 
would get his support. Now, Mr. President, this is the thing that 
I wish the Senator to consider: there is no man in the Senate 
so great a master of language as the Senator from New York. 
We all confess that. There is no man more capable of making 
this amendment perfectly clear. 'J'here is no man more capable by 
apt language to eliminate from it all its excesses. Why, if the 
Senator is in favor of pensioning anybody who was in that war, 
does he not apply his acknowledged talent to reducing the amend- 
ment to proper proportions, and making it as perspicuous and 
clear as possible ? 

Senator Conkling then made a humorous speech, 
in which he pleasantly ridiculed Mr. Thurman as a 
Presidential candidate. It is here given in full : 

"Praise undeserved is satire in disguise;" but I beg to assure 
the honorable Senator from Ohio that I take no offence at the fun 
he makes of me. I am ready to say that when the time shall come 
that he who is a master of language, he who is a master of the 



A HUMOROUS SPEECH. 



417 



science and the diction of law, and competent to do that which in 
satire and derision he proposes to me; when the time shall come 
that he prepares an amendment free from the objections found to 
this, I shall be certain to vote for it, provided two or three other 
things concur. I shall want it offered at some time when Senators 
have slept either the night before or on some recent night, and 
are, by consequence, clear-headed. I shall want it offered at a 
time when the Constitution does not say that the hammer must 
fall a few hours afterward, and at a time when we may enjoy — as 
the Senate so often does enjoy — the sonorous and elaborate non- 
partisan dissertations wherewithal the honorable Senator from Ohio 
embellishes, illuminates and expands to transparency all his great 
conceptions. Then, too, I shall want also an opportunity to take a 
passing glance at the balance sheet of the nation. It will not be 
necessary in my case, as it is said anxious and nervous political 
aspirants sometimes find it necessary before voting upon a ques- 
tion, to go out and not only consult the signs in the zodiac, but 
see how all the tin roosters on all the barns stand, so as to 
know exactly which way the wind blows. [Laughter.] I will not 
ask time to do that, because I have no continental prospects to 
be imperiled by any mistake I may make in voting here. I shall, 
however, want an opportunity to look at the balance sheet. I 
shall want to see whether, at that particular time, there is, or is 
likely to be, any money in the treasury with which to do such a 
magnificent thing as, in exact, appropriate and imposing language, 
the honorable Senator from Ohio will be sure to propose. 

Mr. President, if all these somev/hat varied and, as a lawyer 
from the Senator's State once said, "multificious" circumstances 
[laughter] shall concur, and if there shall be a harmonious union 
of all things, showing that the nick of time, the longed for and 
worked for moment, has come for the honorable Senator from 
Ohio to make his popularity absolutely universal, by adding to 
the endless, idolizing train which follows him the serried ranks of 
the soldiers of the Mexican War, the honorable Senator may be 
sure that I will vote to add all that resplendent length of tail to 
his political kite. [Laughter.] 

I submit to the honorable Senator that nothing could be fairer 
than this. I do not believe that the Senator now is at his best for 
27 



41 8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

SO great and critical an endeavor. The Senator has, on Sunday 
and Sunday night, delivered so many eloquent and fervid speeches, 
he has so taxed his brain and his imagination — particularly his 
imagination — and many of his higher faculties, that I do not be- 
lieve it within the limits of mortal possibility that he can still have 
reserve force enough to expend himself, I might more appropri- 
ately say spread himself [laughter], as undoubtedly he would be 
glad to do when he takes up the question of the Mexican War, 
looks over the whole field, calculates all the chances, and arranges 
it so that all the lights and shadows will strike, as they should 
strike, in reference to 1880 and other great and interesting 
epochs. [Laughter.] 

The Senator from Ohio is in a jesting mood to-night. I am in 
earnest, in grim earnest. I am for the men who carried the Star 
Spangled Banner and planted it on the tower of the city of the 
Aztecs. They are the men for whom the honorable Senator from 
Ohio should legislate. But with his anxieties he may need to 
go further. I beg him to remember those who fought on the 
other side. A good many of them have come across the border 
to live or to steal cattle. They may be a factor in elections and 
results, and I beg him not be thoughtless of them. He should go 
very sure-footed, and not march without scouts. In every view 
it is an important matter, and I warn the honorable Senator not to 
run any risk of turning his back upon a brilliant future by doing 
anything without the utmost forecast. The soldiers' ballot in this 
country is very large; it has great force in many States; it is nu- 
merous, indeed, in all the States, and there are political advan- 
tages and hazards which ought, I think, to relieve this subject 
from the levity with which the honorable Senator from Ohio seems 
inclined to treat it. 

Let me say, further, to that honorable Senator that when he is 
as old as I am, when he has had as much experience as I have 
had in those grand and placid assemblages, each di plaza dc toros, 
called Democratic National Conventions, he will be satisfied, as I 
am, that not in the morning at five o'clock, when he is tired, 
when he is under the reaction of his many speeches, which have 
produced much exhaustion, as all of us can testify, but at some 
other time, when he has himself thoroughly in hand, when he is 



RIDICULING THE DEMOCRATS. -. 419 

able to survey the whole table, and study its angles and its pock- 
« to seeTxactly how to carom not only on the red ball but on 
tXl and ol the Chinese faughter], then and not .11 then 
he should take his cue and prance proudly to the (««/' »«^ 
c a^pion polifcal billiard player of all '"e hem.sphere and ,, h 
i.es rLaiUter.] That is his mission and destmy; and .he . 
rue to it his name will be a light, a landmark, on the cl.ffs o 
ame-the name of one promnrent, not only as a statesman but 
Is a politician; but a candidate able to manage as many horses 
nnmg - fas and in as many different directions as one man 
e ' r atfempted to dr.ve or to ride. I assure the honorable Sena- 
or from Ohio that he entirely mismeasures h,s opportuntty, he 
cruelly belittles his own powers and possib.lmes .f he fads to ap- 
p riale that the furthermost disk to be seen in the Pol.-a fir-. 
ment may be in some measure influenced or deflected m .t bear- 
"g on Ohio by what may be done in the ultimate d.spos.t.on of 
queslns concerning the veterans who fought in the Mex.can ^Var. 

Durino- the three terms of the Forty-sixth Con- 
gress a "select committee held sessions to take 
into consideration the state of the law respectmg 
the ascertaining and declaration of the result of 
the elections of the President and Vice-Pres.deiit 
of the United States. 

After the following remark by William P.nk- 
ney Whyte, of Maryland, February 3. 18S1. Mr. 
Conkling said: 

Mr. Whyte: I am the only remaining Democratic Senator of 

that day in this Congress. 

Mr.Conklhg : As the last leaf upon the tree, not as the last 
rose of summer, but as the rose of last summer, I w>sh to offer 
to the honored Senator from Maryland, and I trust he will re- 
ceive my profound condolence. As was said of Napoleon, that 
honorable Senator is wrapped in the solitude of h,s own ongi- 



420 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

nality. He is the last of the Mohegans, the last of the Barons, 
the last of those long and historic lists of statesmen who once be- 
longed to the late Democratic party, and I uncover in the pres- 
ence of the sole representative of the pale memory of such a 
thing. 

Concerning the insincerity of a viper-like edi- 
tor who had just paid him a friendly visit, he re- 
marked: " He is inferior to the rattlesnake, for 
the latter gives warning of his approach." 

At a meeting called to favor the nomination of 
General Grant for a third term, Senator Conkling 
said: "Those who are now engaged in throwing 
stones at General Grant will, perhaps, some day be 
gathering them together to build a cairn; " and his 
prediction was fulfilled in his adopted city. 

In the Chicago Convention of 1880 some hostile 
hearers called out " Louder!" whereupon he replied, 
" I'll speak much louder when I have anything 
interesting to say." During the ensuing cam- 
paign the Senator once came upon the stage to 
address a large audience, where he found before 
him a low railing covered with flags. Turning to 
one of the managers of the meeting he said: 
" Can't that railing be removed? " The answer was 
that it was very substantial and could not be taken 
down without trouble, to which Mr. Conkling re- 
plied: " Why don't you build a pen around a man 
so that he can just see the top of it? If there is 
anything annoying to me, it is to be fenced in." 



HE POKES FUN AT A SENA TOR. \2\ 

In his legal arguments and Congresssional de- 
bates some of his retorts, uttered in the heat of 
discussion, seem too personal to put into print. 
We publish on a previous page leading examples 
of his love of ridicule, of which one of the most 
brilliant is taken from the Senate Journal for March 
3, 1879. The Congressional Globe and Record from 
1871 to 1881 abound with bright and interesting 
remarks of Roscoe Conkling. 

Senator David Davis, of Illinois, who was termed 
an "Independent," was a political curiosity, and 
of course, belonged to neither party. He now- 
sat on the Republican, now on the Democratic 
side. One day Mr. Conkling said to a colleague, 
" Let us have some fun with Judge Davis." He 
then remarked in the presence of both: "Judge, I 
notice that you go across the fence very often. 
Do you gel mileage for this?'' Senator Davis re- 
plied, ''Hang you! hang you!" 

Senator Conkling was once told that one of his 
enemies was about to be appointed to a foreign 
mission. He answered, " I am glad of it; the for- 
eigner, the better." 

In the great railway foreclosure suit of Marie 
vs. Garrison, he spoke of the mortgage as "a 
compound, comminuted, fricasseed fraud." We 
here give two extracts from Mr. Conkling's argu- 
ment in the same litigation: 



422 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The defendant, after the sale, took possession of the land 
under his deed, and retained it, and paid the taxes, and received 
the rents, and this suit was not commenced until nearly nine 
years after the sale, when the land had greatly increased in value. 

That reminds me of the Indian woman whom Gillette found 
leaning against a tree when he went out as agent of the Ogden 
Land Company to make a treaty with the Seneca Indians. She 
was making more noise than the law allowed, crying in the wilder- 
ness and sparing not; and he went to her, and to soothe her, said; 
** My good woman, don't. We are not going to take your land; 
we are not going to turn you off." " Oh," she said, "that is not 
it;" and finally, pulling herself together, she sobbed: " My old 
Indian has been dead fourteen years, and I can't hold in no 
longer." 

■3f -x- * * * * * 

Referring to another subject, he said: 

Look at the liquor laws. Look at the opinion of the learned 
counsel in the Maine Law case; which I take occasion to say, in 
his presence, in my judgment has never been answered. Is wine 
vialutn in se, or even contraband, regardless of the statute? It 
was a confrere in political action of the learned counsel who said 
that wine was always commended in the Scriptures; that he never 
heard of but one man there mentioned who asked for water, and 
that he was in hell, where he ought to have been. Consider the 
impossibility of these two learned gentlemen, charioteers as they 
both are of the Democratic party, as well as of the Bar, insisting 
that wine (or perhaps I had better put it whisky) is j)ialum in se ! 

Toward the close of the Senator's pubhc hfe one 
of the Southern brigadiers said to a member of 
Congress from New York. " Mr. H , we peo- 
ple from the South don't care much about what 
the Northerners say of us, excepting Roscoe Conk- 
Hng. When he rises to attack us, his scornful eye 



SOME DROLL REMARKS. 



423 



and cutting" sarcasm are too much. We cannot 
stand it." 

Once in the presence of Mr. ConkUng some one 
was criticising the conduct of a very devoted 
friend, evidently expecting that the Senator would 
also join him in condemning it. Instead of doing 
so, he, in order to express in the strongest manner 
his veneration and love, thus replied : " If Mr. 

L came here with a rawhide in his hand, and 

bade me take off my coat, for he intended to lash 
my back, I suppose I would do it." 

In 1887 an old political friend of Mr. Conkling 
asked the author to obtain the influence of the ex- 
Senator concerning an appointment which the 
new mayor of New York would soon make. The 
plan was to induce the editor of a prominent news- 
paper to recommend to the mayor the applicant 
in question. His reply was : " No — an editor can- 
not afford to become a suppliant for public office. 
If he does, he loses his spirit of independence." 

The author then remarked that his friend did 
not wish to come to him in person lest he should 
give annoyance. Thereupon Mr. Conkling re- 
torted, " What ! I am not such a hedge-hog as to 
refuse to see a decent man." 

He once protested that he was never tired in his 
life. "If I ever get mad at anybody," he said, 
playfully, '* it will be for telling me that I am tired." 



424 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK'LING. 

The generation of hearers of the Oneida orator 
is slowly, but with increasing acceleration, pass- 
ing away. The next generation will have noth- 
ing but cold type and the evidence of those w^ho 
were once listeners wherewith to pass upon the 
merits of the distinguished orator who never 
strove for posthumous fame. 



^i5 



1872. ^ ^ 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE ADMINISTRATION VINDICATED DEBATES IN THE 

SENATE HIS GREATEST CAMPAIGN SPEECH. 

" I ^HE current session was a busy one for Mr. 
Conkling, for he was prominent in the con- 
sideration of all important measures, but espe- 
cially in the discussions concerning the Chicago 
fire, the resignation of federal judges, the duties 
on tea and coifee, Senatorial recommendations 
to office, soldiers' homesteads, the Texas-Pacific 
Railroad, the naval appropriation bill and the 
Ku-Klux act. 

During this trying period for the Republican 
party (the winter of the years 1 871-1872), when it 
was bitterly attacked from within the lines, it was 
Senator Conkling who did the important work of 
upholding its standard. He parried the adroit 
thrusts of Sumner, Trumbull, Schurz and others, 
and gave each blow for blow. He did more than 
any other man to save the Republicans from defeat 
and disintegration during the " Liberal " Republi- 
can movement of 1872. The Republican party 



426 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING, 

was assailed by sworn foes without and professed 
friends within ; and the stinging- blows which Mr. 
Conkling then inflicted upon leading marplots 
excited, in different parts of the Union, the enmity 
of certain prominent persons claiming to be Re- 
publicans. This animosity continued unrelenting- 
ly till the day of his death. 

Senator Conkling was active in the debate in 
relation to the long preamble submitted by Mr. 
Sumner, February 12, charging the authorities of 
the United States with violating its neutrality tow- 
ard Prussia by selling arms to France in the 
late Franco-German War. The preamble also 
charged American officials with corruption. 

A resolution followed raising a special commit- 
tee to inquire fnto all the charges, and also into 
other matters not touching the Government or 
officials, but relating to the mercantile affairs of 
American citizens. 

No objection was made to an immediate vote 
on the motion, but Mr. Sumner asked delay. 

Mr. Conkling proposed, on February 16, 1872, 
an amendment to the resolution submitted by 
Mr. Sumner to inquire in relation to the sale of 
ordnance stores made by the Government of the 
United States during the war between France and 
Germany; viz.y after the word " parties," in line 6 
of the resolution, insert — 



VINDICATES THE ADMINISTRATION. 427 

And that said committee also inquire and report whether any 
member of the Senate or any other American citizen is, or has 
been, in communication or collusion with the Government or au- 
thorities of France, or with any emissary or spy thereof, in refer- 
ence to the said matters. 

Mr. Conkling obtained the floor February 19 
and spoke at great length. His remarks, if print- 
ed, would cover forty pages of this volume. For 
this speech he chose as a motto, " Let all the 
ends thou aim'st at be thy country's." 

Thus he began: 

Nearly five months of this session have gone — March, April, 
December, January have gone, and nearly the whole of Febru- 
ary. Legislation waits, and debate goes on, only for political 
effect. The appropriation bills are put aside. They ought to be 
acted on now, while they may be deliberately sifted and freed 
from errors which will escape us in the haste of belated consid- 
eration. The revision of the tariff which ought to be made has 
not yet been made. No action has been taken upon the bill 
which ought to strike forty millions of internal taxes from the 
shoulders of enterprise and labor, which ought to disband the 
remnant of the army of internal revenue collectors, and reduce 
the internal revenue establishment to a skeleton. These bills 
and others wait. Needless political discussion blocks the way. 

If right v/ere the opposite of wrong, this could not be right; 
but rights are of many kinds, and some rights are the twins of 
wrong. The Constitution says a Senator shall not be questioned 
in any other place for that he utters here; and thus a Senator 
may, by preamble and by speech, slander his countrymen, slan- 
der his Government, slander his country, and place it in a false 
position before the nations of the earth. All this may be done 
to the hurt of the public business, to the peril of the nation's in- 
terests at home and abroad; and there may be no aim or reason 
in it except to affect a Presidential election, and to gratify passion 



428 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

and wreak vengeance on individuals. It may be done boldly in 
plain words, or it may be done by vague and cunning hints; it 
may be best done by insinuation, the most deadly weapon in 
slander's virulent vocabulary. Howevei^ it be done, if it be done 
and time be wasted in debate, the waste must be charged to those 
who bring on debate and insist upon it. 

Near the close of his speech he had some sharp 
passages with the opponents of the Administration. 

About a month was consumed in the debate 
upon the sales of arms to France. Senator Conk- 
ling's amendment, which was introduced Febru- 
ary 16, was reported six days later, and after a 
sharp debate with Messrs. Sumner and Schurz, it 
was agreed to with but one negative vote. The 
amendment reflected upon Senator Sumner and 
his associates. The resolution submitted by Mr. 
Sumner on the twelfth instant was, in the amended 
form, adopted February 29, and the preamble was 
laid upon the table by a vote of forty yeas to 
one nay. Thus ended the famous debate con- 
cerning the sale of arms to French agents, and 
which made Mr. Conkling more conspicuous than 
he had been theretofore. It was begun in politi- 
cal resentment. President Grant had been, so to 
speak, wounded in the house of his former pro- 
fessed friends. Several days later Mr. Conkling 
said to the author, "The question now before the 
Senate is, whether General Grant is going to be 
the next President." 



ENDORSES PRESIDENT GRANT. 



429 



Concerning the re-election of General Grant, 
the following letter was read at a mass meeting in 
the Cooper Institute, New York. 



Senate Chamber, 
Washington, April 14, 1872 



.1 



Gentlemen — I rejoice that on Wednesday next the merchants 
and bankers of New York will speak for President Grant. In 
hours of supreme peril, now past, the nation received its best and 
wisest impulses from these same merchants and bankers. Their 
voice is timely now again to hold the country steady in the course 
of safe, honest and prosperous administration, and to check the 
restless spirit which seeks change at the cost of the general good. 
A people would be ungrateful and stolid indeed who could find 
no cause of thankfulness to God and to man in the marvelous 
prosperity which so quickly followed a desolating and agonizing 
war. A man must be sadly constituted who, looking abroad upon 
forty million people blest as we have been for the last three years, 
can find nothing better to inspire him than resentment, ambition 
and disappointment; nothing to dwell upon but the flaws and 
faults from which humanity never will be free. A public senti- 
ment would be strangely depraved and ungenerous which could 
patiently tolerate the unjust accusations and wanton aspersions 
now heaped upon a firm and modest chief magistrate, who in 
peace or in war never shrank from his duty, and whose civil ad- 
ministration, should it end to-morrow, must ever stand among 
the best and purest in our history. Never was there a time more 
fitting than this for business men to express their judgment in 
national affairs. If the name and character of the administration 
of Ulysses S. Grant have been of value to the nation, no one 
knows it so well as the men who represent the property, the credits, 
the public securities and the enterprise of the country North and 
South. If the President has been a tower of strength at home 
and abroad; if his silent firmness has inspired confidences and 
security; if the turbulence in the South has quailed; if schemes 
of repudiation and expansion have hidden their heads; if restored 
currency and reduced debt and taxation have come; if foreign 



43 O LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLL^G. 

nations have composed difference with us and so borne them- 
selves as to accord our country the weight and dignity it deserves; 
in short, if our Government has for three years been a good watch- 
dog, guarding rights, liberties and interests everywhere, the busi- 
ness men of the city of New York know it. They ought to say 
it, and when they speak the nation will hear. My testimony will 
not be needed in such a cloud of witnesses, yet, grateful for your 
invitation, I would gladly accept it did not other duties stand in the 
way. I hope soon to address the citizens of New York, but you will 
pardon me if I say a further word here. Entering Congress in 1859, 
I have tried to study closely four administrations, and to learn 
their inner workings; and my conviction is, that in rigid honesty, 
in duties earnestly, wisely and successfully done, the last three 
years are the best of the last thirteen. Writing, as I do, on the an- 
niversary of Lincoln's great proclamation which struck the fetters 
from four million slaves, and revering Lincoln's memory, I be- 
lieve Lincoln's devotion to duty never rose higher than Grant's. 
Of all the men I have seen in high station there is not one with 
less pride of opinion or of place; not one more ready to revise 
his own judgment and weigh the suggestions of others; not one 
more anxious to do all things well — than he whose re-election you 
will aid to secure. No administration, or party, or majority in 
Congress has ever so remorselessly investigated, purged and pun- 
ished its own offences; none was ever so courageous in meeting 
accusations, however gratuitous or unpatriotic. When the many 
committees now searching for abuses shall report all their dis- 
coveries, the country will be struck by the contrast between the 
truth and the allegations; and not less between the contrast of 
the record of the present administration and most of its predeces- 
sors. Wednesday's meeting will forecast the victory in the com- 
ing canvass. Under what name or disguises the opposition may 
present itself, it will in nature and result be the Democratic party. 
The election of the ticket to be nominated at Philadelphia is an 
event which I no more doubt than I doubt the wisdom and virtue 

of the American people. 

Your obedient servant, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

To Messrs. Morgan, Clews and Opdvke, Committee, &c. 



HORA CE GREELE V IS NOMINA TED. 43 1 

The first national nominating convention of the 
year, that of the " Liberal " Republican party, met 
at Cincinnati a fortnight after the publication of 
the above letter (May i). 

Horace Greeley was named as the candidate for 
President, and B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, re- 
ceived the second place on the ticket. The regu- 
lar Republican Convention assembled at Philadel- 
phia four days later. On the first ballot, as on 
the occasion of his former nomination, General 
Grant was given a unanimous vote ; and on the 
second, Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, was chos- 
en for the Vice-Presidency. On the ninth day of 
July the Democratic Convention was held at Bal- 
timore and the candidates of the Liberal Republi- 
cans were adopted. 

The next subject of importance, which we should 
mention in this chapter, is Senator Conkling's rec- 
ord on the bill to extend the provisions of the 
fourth section of the act approved April 20, 1871, 
known as the Ku-Klux act. The proposition was 
that the provisions of the above-named section 
should " continue in force until the end of the 
next regular session of Congress." In the Com- 
mittee of the Whole, Mr. Conkling voted against 
the amendment of Mr. Vickers, of Maryland, to 
insert at the end of the bill to the effect that be- 
fore the President shall suspend the writ of habeas 



432 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

corpus in any State, he shall be satisfied by the 
affidavits of at least ten respectable residents of 
the county or district where the disorders are al- 
leged to exist, that insurrection, violence or un- 
lawful combinations to obstruct the execution of 
the laws of such State or of the United States ex- 
ist to deprive a portion of the people of some of the 
rights, etc., named in the Constitution and secured 
by law; and that such combinations are so power- 
ful as to be able by violence to overthrow the au- 
thorities of such State, or of the United States, or 
that the constituted authorities connive at the un- 
lawful purposes of such armed and powerful com- 
binations.''^" 

The bill having been reported without amend- 
ment, it was passed by a vote of twenty-eight to 
fifteen, Senator Conkling voting in the affirmative. 

The debate on this measure was prolonged to 
an early hour on the morning of May 2 1 ; and 
Senators Thurman and Conkling then exchanged 
some sharp words. 

At the same time (May 21, 1872) Senator Conk- 
ling favored the supplementary civil rights bill. 
He voted against the two amendments of Senator 
Thurman, which in substance were (first) to strike 
out the clause permitting colored persons to enter 
" any place of public amusement or entertainment," 

* The language of the amendment is substantially given, 



THE STEAMBOA T LA W. 433 

and (second) to make the minimum fine five dol- 
lars instead of $500 dollars for each offence. 
- When the tax and tariff bill (under which a 
commission of three would be appointed by the 
President) was pending before the Senate, Mr. 
Conkling moved to amend the first section by 
striking- out all thereof after the word ''persons," 
and inserting — 

To consider and examine the various plans and methods of 
raising revenue, to report the best tax and tariff system they can 
devise, having regard to the interests of labor in its relations to 
capital and otherwise, and having regard also to the interests of 
commerce and of all classes of the American people; and said per- 
sons shall hold office for one year from the date of their appoint- 
ment. 

Several days before the close of the session, Mr. 
Conkling strenuously and successfully opposed 
the measure commonly known as the " steamboat 
law." It was a bill for the benefit of owners and 
stockholders of steam vessels and not for that of 
passengers. His action elicited severe criticisms 
from journals in the steamboat interest. The Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, in a communication to the 
Senate Committee on Commerce, of which Mr. 
Conkling was a member, set forth many objec- 
tionable provisions of the bill, for it failed to se- 
cure adequate protection and safety to travelers. 
Mr. Conkling arrayed himself against the lobby, 

and whenever a Senator takes this ground, he is 

28 



434 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

generally on the right side of a public question. 
The bill was finally passed after the conference 
committee had rejected thirty-five and modified 
eleven amendments. 

During the year 1872 Mr. Conkling, who had 
been without a legal associate since 1862, formed 
a partnership for the practice of law with Scott 
Lord (afterward a representative in Congress for 
the Oneida district) and Alfred C. Coxe, now 
(1889) the United States District Judge for the 
Northern District of New York. The firm name 
was Conkling, Lord & Coxe, and it existed till 
1876. After the dissolution, Mr. Coxe was occa- 
sionally associated with the Senator in cases be- 
fore the Supreme Court of the United States. 

The following correspondence between Senator 
Conkling and General Grant explains itself : 

Long Branch, N. J., July 9, 1872. 

Dear Senator: Two weeks from Monday next, the twenty- 
eighth of July I think that will be, I propose to start for Thou- 
sand Islands, in the St. Lawrence. Can you not, with Mrs. 
Conkling and daughter, come one week before, and spend the 
time until we start, with us, and all return together? I will have 
for the party a special car, by the Erie road and a new route 
branching off from it to Syracuse. From there we will work our 
way east as far as Utica over the Central as best we can. 

The Baltimore Convention is now in incubation. Before she 
hatches, and we see what the offspring looks like, or rather, how it 
is received by its parents, it is hard to judge how much fondling 
it will receive. Whether it will be caressed as much after hatch- 
ing as during incubation, I doubt much. But I won't write poli- 



GENERAL GRANT'S OPINION. 435 

tics I only want to know if you and Mrs. Conkling can come and 
spend a week with us at the time specified. If you have engage- 
xnents then, say so, and at what time you can come, or come then 
and attend to your engagements, and leave Mrs. C. to Mrs^ 
Grant's care. I know during the warm weather she will find no 
more pleasant place than at Long Branch. r^.VHncr 

Mrs Grant joins me in kindest regards to Mrs. Conkhng, 

daughter and yourself. ^^^^^ ^^"^S. S. Gk.kx. 

Long Branch, July 15, 1872. 
My Dear Senator: I regret that we shall not have the pleas- 
ure of your and Mrs. Conkling's company next week, but suppose 
we mult wait till a later day. We will go, however, at the fme 
Mirted in my former letter. Our route will be by Syracuse, 
and o r arrivaUn Ut.ca will probably be Tuesday even.ng. My 
son, who has been with General Sherman for the last s.x months, 

"■"i>^^::;,. is tk., it .ill ie „e,.er tl.a, I sk.uU nat atten, 
am convention or political meeting during the campaign It has 
been done, so far as I remember, by but two Pres.denfal cand 
dates heretofore, and both of them were public ^^fl^-^^^ 
were beaten. I am no speaker, and don't want to be beaten 
From Utica our route will be by Watertown and Cape Vmcent 
thence down the St. Lawrence as early as '"e trams leave on 
Friday morning. If you have any engagements, ""^ 'f M;^.^^ 
has which make it inconvenient to have us visit you at the time 
indlclted pray do not hesitate to say so. Mrs. Grant 30ms me 
Sn kindest'regards to Mrs. Conkling, Miss Bessie, and yourself. 

Yours truly, 

U. S. Grant. 

Senator Conkling now prepared himself to enter 
the Presidential canvass. Since the year 1852 he 
had rarely made personal attacks in his speeches, 
but owing to the bitterness of certain apostate 
Republicans toward Grant, he felt himself com- 



436 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

pelled to assail the character and record of Mr. 
Greeley and his followers. It will be remembered 
that Horace Greeley had, for several years, iden- 
tified himself with a faction in the Republican 
party. Mr. Conkling did not, as a rule, believe in 
hero worship during a political campaign. He 
loved his State and his party more than noted 
names the bearers of which belied their good 
reputations. In this connection he said, several 
years later, " It is jiot a question of candidates." 
His indignation at the spirit exhibited toward 
General Grant led him to begin the campaign at 
an early day, and he delivered at the city of New 
York, July 23, 1872, the longest and greatest cam- 
paign address of his life. It would cover sixty 
"brevier" pages of this volume. An edition in 
pamphlet form was printed, and the Republican 
State Committee issued, as a campaign document, 
an abridged tract of twenty pages, comprising 
about 19,000 words of the speech, in which many 
matters pertaining to the politics of New York 
were omitted. The rest of the chapter is chiefly 
devoted to this speech. 

" No might nor greatness in mortality 

Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny 
The whitest virtue strikes; what king so strong 
Cm tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?" 

— Measure for Measure. 

For twenty years it has been my privilege to address my 
neighbors upon political issues, and too much ardor has, perhaps, 



HIS GREATEST CAMPAIGN SPEECH. 437 

been among my faults. Yet no canvass has ever stirred me so 
deeply as this. No election has ever appealed so strongly to my 
sense of fair play, no canvass within my memory has ever been so 
full of foul play, injustice and malice, none has ever more thorough- 
ly tested the common sense and generosity of the American peopk 

INJUSTICE HEArED ON THE PRESIDENT. 
Eleven years' service in Congress has made me a close ob- 
server of four Presidents and of many public men; and if among 
them all there is one, living or dead, who never knowingly failed 
in his duty, that one is Ulysses S. Grant. If there has been a 
high official ever ready to admit and correct an error— if there has 
been one who did wisely, firmly and well the things given him in 
charge, that one is the soldier in war and the quiet patriot in 
peace, who has been named again by every township in forty-six 
States and Territories for the great trust he now holds. Yet this 
man, honest, brave and modest, and proved by his transcendent 
deeds to be endowed with genius, common sense and moral 
qualities adequate to the greatest affairs; this man who saved his 
country, who snatched our nationality, and our cause from de- 
spair, and bore them on his shield through the flame of battle, in 
which, but for him, they would have perished; this man, under 
whose' administration our country has flourished as no one dared 
predict; this man, to whom a nation's gratitude and benediction 
are due', is made the mark for ribald gibes and odious, groundless 
slanders. Why is all this ? Simply because he stands in the way 
of the greed and ambition of politicians and schemers. 

Many honest men join in the cry, or hear it without indigna- 
tion. They are deceived by the cloud of calumny which darkens 
the sky; but the inventors are men distempered with griefs, or else 
the sordid and the vile, who follow politics as the shark follows 
the ship. A war of mud and missiles has been waged for months. 
The President, his family and all nearly associated with him, have 
been bespattered, and truth and decency have been driven far 
away. Every thief and cormorant and drone who has been put 
out— every baffled mouser for place and plunder— every man with 
a grievance or a grudge— all who have something to make by a 
chlnge, seem to wag an unbridled tongue or to drive a foul pen. 



438 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The American people may misjudge a political question, they 
may be deceived, but, with the truth before them, they will never 
be unjust, and never untrue upon a question of right and wrong. 
Ingratitude has been charged upon republics, and just there is 
the point where the angry enemies of the President have blundered. 
***** ^f * 

WHY SHOULD DEMOCRATS VOTE P^OR GREELEY ? 

Upon what ground will patriotic Democrats prefer Greeley to 
Grant ? They must prefer Greeley because they disapprove 
Grant personally, or else because they disapprove some political 
doctrine he represents. 

Are Democrats for repudiating the debt ? Are they for agi- 
tating or annulling the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amend- 
ments of the Constitution ? Would they re-establish slavery ? 
Would they pay the rebel war debt, or pensions to rebel soldiers, 
or rebel war claims ? Would they inflate the currency again and 
flood the country with paper money ? Are Democrats against re- 
ducing taxes and expenses ? Are Democrats opposed to peace 
with all nations and stable Government at home ? These ques- 
tions are not asked to impugn the position of any man, but for 
the opposite reason. 

General Grant being tried and true in all these things, why 
should any Union man, or conservative man, or business man, or 
patriot, vote against him, even if his competitor was a safe and 
fit man for President ? Plainly there can be no reason, unless 
Grant is unworthy of confidence or respect, and deserves to be 
found guilty of the crimes and vices alleged against him. To 
judge this question, we must examine his history and lay bare his 
life. " The tree is known by its fruit," the carpenter by his chips, 
the man by his deeds. 

******* 

From the breaking out of the Rebellion, his career is a " thrice- 
told tale" — the world knows it by heart. When the flag sank at 
Sumter he did not wait to be called. Without commission, com- 
mand, uniform or shoulder-straps, he started for the field, and 
grasping the Stars and Stripes, he carried them through a blaze 
of victories such as no mortal before him had won. 



WHA T GREELE V SAID. 439 

While Senators who now hawk at him were lolling for a fourth 
term on cushions, and eviscerating encyclopedias, books of quo- 
fatLs and classical dictionaries, the tanner of ^^ - sw^p re 
bellion from the valley of the Mississippi, and the Father of Waters 

n=lr^^ who reposed unmeas.ed^c^jM^ ^n 
him called him at once from the victor.ous fields of the West to 
^:Crtme„t of the Potomac, that Golgotha where army afte 
army the very flower of the nation, had melted away. He came 
t™he'w,lder„ess of Virginia when the traitorous Commonwealth 
had become the rendezvous of the allied armies of rebell.on and 
ttn the rebel chiefs were boasting that in the ^astn^--^^*/^ 
Bine Ridge they could defy the world m arms. He mar'='"=<» 
from wish ngton, and he measured no backward step unt.l he set 
Ws foot upon the shattered fragments of the greatest md.tary 
"an invading army ever overthrew. He s*ed the problem 
which had baffled all others, and preserved a nationality after the 

"lo^'sZd'he fh^.T nation leaned and reposed upon him 
anfbLted h!;:. Beth hemispheres gazed at him as the prodigy 
and wonder of the age. , , 

Tke Democrats sought his consent to ^'^''^^^f f'"'J'[J^ 
Presidency Mont platform or pledge, but ne ^^^'^^f^^^^^'^'^ll^ 
ritv taught him that when a party chooses a candidate from the 
rity taugni. ^ , . . . pheated- and by Grant's consent, 

other side somebody is to be cheatea, auu, uy 

no one ever was or ever will be cheated. 

****** 
WHAT HORACE GREELEY SAID. 
.Grant and his policy deserved the very highest credit. 
- The people of the United States know General G^^'^t-have 
known all about him since Donelson and Vicksburg; they do not 
know his slanderers, and do not care to know them 

^^ While asserting the right of every ^^I^^ ^^'^^^^ ^"^-^^^^^^^^^ 

meled choice of a candidate for next President unU^^a nominauon 

is made, I venture to suggest that General Grant will be ar bet 

er qual fied for that momentous trust in 1872 than he was in 868^ 

^ We are led by him who first taught our armies to conquer m 



440 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the West, and subsequently in the East also. Richmond would 
not come to us until we sent Grant after it; and then it had to 
come. He has never yet been defeated, and never will be. He 
will be as great and successful on the field of politics as on that 
of arms." 

* * -x- * ^ * * 

"GIFT-TAKING." 

But let us go back a moment to Grant before he seriously 
thought of being President, and when he was only the idol of the 
nation. Returning from the field covered with glory but poor in 
money, the affluent, whose fortunes he had saved, met him with 
munificent offerings. In this they followed the customs of an- 
cient and modern times. 

The austere republics of antiquity enriched and ennobled 
their heroes returning from victory. England, with an unwritten 
Constitution and an omnipotent Parliament, which a lawyer once 
said <* could do anything but make a man a woman," has enriched 
her generals both by acts of Parliament and by voluntary sub- 
scriptions. 

In the United States the Constitution does not permit Con- 
gress to act in such matters; here they rest wholly in the volun- 
tary action of individuals; and that public presentations to heroes 
involved turpitude in givers or recipients has been first found out 
by the spurious reformers and libelers now clamoring for notice. 

Wellington received from his Government and his neighbors 
more than $3,000,000. British citizens of Calcutta made him 
presents, the officers of the array gave him $10,000, the House of 
Commons voted him $1,000,000, and a mansion and estate were 
purchased for him by subscription at a cost of $1,300,000. Be- 
sides this, he was three times ennobled, twice by England and 
once by Spain. 

Oliver Cromwell, for deeds done in civil war, received $32,500 
a year in gifts. Marlborough was given a stately palace and a 
splendid fortune. Nelson and his family were ennobled, and re- 
ceived $75,000. Jewels and money were given to Fairfax for 
services in civil war. 



THE PRESIDENT'S WISHES. 44 1 

GRANT NO MONEY-MAKER AND NO OFFICE-SEEKER. 

Had wealth gained in ofifice been Grant's aim, he would never 
have been President. As General of the army, he stood the fore- 
most man of all the earth. His pay was for life, and was nearly 
if not quite as great annually as the Presidential salary. In money 
value and money-making opportunity, as well as in ease and free- 
dom, his position then was immeasurably better than the Presi- 
dency for four years or eight. We know the Presidency sought 
him, and not he the Presidency; but had avarice been his thought, 
he vrould have refused the Presidency and kept the life-place of 
General. 

The Presidential salary has not lured him now. We hear of 
**^his pretensions," and of his " insisting upon being a candidate;" 
yet, first and last, he never made himself a candidate, and never, 
to my knowledge, has he expressed a wish to be re-elected. So 
far from it, that for more than a year his friends were uneasy with 
solicitude lest he should withhold absolutely the use of his name. 

In place of dividing or hazarding the Republican party by 
seeking a re-nomination, he never consented to stand a second time 
until he was assured on every hand that the party demanded him, 
as the only man who could not be beaten; and my firm convic- 
tion is that, had no aspersion been cast upon him, he would per- 
sonally gladly be mustered out. 

More than a year ago, expressing to me privately his earnest 
wish to leave public toil, he said that at West Point he counted 
the days, the hours and even the minutes, to elapse before he 
should be graduated, and that, with a like eagerness, he counted 
the time that would complete his Presidential service; and often, 
before vindictive injustice had roused him to resistance, those who 
knew him best, and among them the ablest and purest members 
of the Senate, continually expressed solicitude lest he should re- 
fuse to run again, and leave the party distracted by rivalries and 
with no candidate so strong. 

But when the shower of mud and the beating of gongs and the 
foul-mouthed uproar burst upon him, all felt that we were safe. 
Grant never scares well at all, and is never driven when courage 
can make a stand; and the two debts the Republican party owes 
to the deserters who have attempted to betray it are, first, that 



442 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

they have cleansed and reformed the party by leaving it; and, 
second, that they have insured it a candidate who, in the words of 
Horace Greeley, '* has never yet been defeated, and never will be." 

****** * 

Then came the next effort to throw dust in the people's eyes. 
The New York Tribune and other journals, which for a year had 
been doing the worse than menial ofifices of the Democratic party, 
raised a yell that "the office-holders were going to renominate 
Grant." This bald tale had its run until the Philadelphia Con- 
vention met. It then turned out that among seven hundred and 
fifty delegates there were not thirty office-holders, a thing unex- 
ampled in American politics. 

******* 

After scrutinizing Mr. Greeley's career minutely, 
the speaker thus concluded: 

Yet in the blind - staggers of faction the American people are 
challenged to scan and decide upon this record. 

Such a coalition and such a nomination mean chaos and dis- 
order. 

" Liberal Republican " movements have been tried in other 
States, and, until the results were felt, they succeeded. They 
tried, in Virginia, nominating a Republican for Governor on a 
bargain with the Democrats. Many Republicans were entrapped, 
and Virginia is cursed with a rule which the best Democrats are 
ashamed of. 

They tried in West Virginia a fusion between " outs " and 
Democrats, and now West Virginia holds debate in her Constitu- 
tional Convention on the question of nullifying the Constitution 
of the United States and depriving the blacks of the right to 
vote. They tried in Tennessee a movement of bolters and Demo- 
crats, and the result is the destruction of common schools in 
which 190,000 children were cultured. 

They made the experiment in Missouri, and the fruit it bore 
is a Democratic State government and Frank Blair in the Senate. 

In all these cases one side or the other was cheated and the 
public interest was harmed, and now it is proposed to attempt the 



''LIBERAL" REPUBLICAN MOVEMENTS. 443 

same thing on a national scale. No wonder that leading Demo- 
cratic journals and large bodies of Democrats refuse to be parties 
to such chicanery, and no wonder that it draws to itself, as no other 
movement ever did, the very worst of elements, North and South. 

The issue stands before you. On the one side is safe, tried 
and stable government, peace with all nations and prosperity at 
home, with business thriving and debt and taxes melting away. 

On the other side is a hybrid conglomeration made up of the 
crotchets, distempers and personal aims of restless and disappoint- 
ed men. What ills might come of committing to them the affairs 
of the nation no judgment can fathom, no prophecy can foretell. 

The result is very safe, because it rests with the same gener- 
ation which was given by Providence to see through the darkness 
of the Rebellion, and that generation cannot be blind now. 

This speech gave rise to much abuse of Mr. 
Conkhng in the Democratic and renegade Re- 
pubhcan press. The Greeley organs spoke of the 
'' Grant " party as if it were a minority organiza- 
tion. Senator Lyman Trumbull, in a speech at 
Chicago several days later, assailed the senior 
Senator from New York for denouncing the de- 
famers of General Grant. 

It has since been said that the desertion of 
Grant by many of his former Republican support- 
ers serves as an example of the ingratitude of re- 
publics. 

It will be remembered that following the divis- 
ion in the Republican party of New York the 
Democrats carried the State at every election 
from 1867 to 1870 inclusive. In the autumn of 
1 87 1, although an "off" year, we have seen that 



444 ^/^^ AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CON/CLING. 

the Republicans were successful. Hence New 
York was regarded as a doubtful State. Bearing 
this fact in mind, Senator Conkling did not leave 
his own Commonwealth, but spoke in all parts of 
it. He then attained the distinction of formulat- 
ing to a great extent the creed of his party, the 
justification of its Administration and its claims 
to popular support. 

It may be claimed, properly, that he was the most 
effective of the Republican orators of the campaign 
of 1872. Excepting the autumn of 1880, the record 
of his achievements on the platform in the second 
canvass of General Grant surpasses in brilliancy 
and power any similar labors he ever accomplished. 
Senator Conkling's next speech was at Utica, Au- 
gust 8. Several days afterward General and Mrs. 
Grant, with a few chosen friends, visited Mr. and 
Mrs. Conkling. A reception was held at the Sena- 
tor's mansion, at which four thousand persons 
shook the hand of the hero of Appomattox."* 

The result of the State election in North Caro- 
lina was then in doubt, but, in the earnest hope for 
Republican success. Senator Conkling said to 
President Grant : " General, if North Carolina has 
gone the right way, I won't get drunk, but I shall 
certainly quench my thirst." 

* The late Dr. John P. Gray stood near General Grant and counteil the 
" hand-shakers." 



LETTER FROM MR. SEWARD. 



445 



The reader will remember that in 1858, during 
Roscoe Conkling's first Congressional campaign, 
William H. Seward came to Oneida County to 
speak in his behalf. In reply to an invitation to 
take the stump in support of the Republican can- 
didates, Mr. Seward sent the following letter : 

Auburn, N. Y., August 12, 1872. 

My Dear Sir: I have reflected upon your kind letter of the 
fifth, in which you invite me, in accordance with what you think 
is the wish of many others, to express my views on the present 
political canvass. 

Immediately after the general election of i860 it became 
quite manifest that the advantage which had been gained in the 
election, in arresting the extension of slavery, was to be made the 
occasion of a civil war, with the declared objects of overthrowing 
the Constitution and dissolving the Union. Until that time I had 
been a leader in political debates. But it was the pleasure of the 
American people that I should relinquish that place and assume 
a ministerial office in the executive department which was so sud- 
denly called upon to meet that exigency. Ministerial functions 
in revolutionary periods are trying and difficult. I did not be- 
lieve that I should be able to perform successfully those which 
devolved upon me without an absolute renunciation of all politi- 
cal aspirations and partisan sentiments for my whole after life. I 
made and avowed that renunciation cheerfully, because I thought 
the fall of the republic would involve those who were in charge of 
the administration of its Government in irretrievable infamy, 
while if it should be saved my participation in saving it would be 
sufficient to crown a generous ambition. 

The retirement which I entered upon in 1869, in pursuance of 
that resolution, has thus far been maintained. No unforeseen 
circumstances have yet occurred which seem to make it either 
necessary or wise that I should quit it. Moreover, health some- 
what impaired and advancing years have rendered that retire- 
ment congenial. 



446 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

My fellow-citizens, however, are in no case left in ignorance 

concerning the principles and policy which I deem it my duty to 

support by my vote. Beyond this, as at present advised, I must 

be excused from going. 

Very sincerely yours, 

William H. Seward. 
By A. A. G. 

The Honorable Roscoe Conklino, Utica, N. Y. 

The Soldiers' and Sailors' State Convention met 
at Utica, August 20, 1872. At the conclusion of 
the proceedings the delegates, headed by a band 
of music, marched to the residence of Mr. Conk- 
ling, who appeared upon the portico of his house 
and spoke as follows : 

General, Soldiers and Fellow-Citizens — I need not tell you 
how welcome your presence is. No visit could be more acceptable 
than one from soldiers who became veterans on the burning bat- 
tle-fields where the republic was saved. Crowned with the un- 
fading glories already earned in paths of peril, you might repose 
upon your laurels, and leave others to bear the brunt of the re- 
maining fight. But no; volunteers and heroes once cannot be 
laggards afterward. * * * 

Now you see pJots to destroy the fruits of your valor and your 
toil, and again you appear in the field, a peaceful but arduous 
field, and there, once more you marshal the way to safety and 
success. The worst elements of the Rebellion, which failed in war, 
now creep and prowl in the stealthy path of politics, but they lift 
a fallen crest in vain. No victories are in store for the enemies 
of Union, order and liberty during the life of the officers and 
privates who fought for Vicksburg and Richmond and swept with 
Sherman from the mountains to the sea. A future generation, 
but not this one, may misread the lessons of the last ten years. 
In every State the "Boys in Blue" are marching, the empty 



ADDRESSES SOLDIERS AND SAILORS. 447 

sleeves and crutches are astir, and the '* Lost Cause " will remain 
lost. 

TT Jjl tST ^ ¥ -jC •!» 

This is the meaning of your convention and of your visit to- 
night. 

The canvass is defiled by shameful falsehoods, which outrage 
not only truth and decency, but common gratitude and common 
sense. Not content with arguing who shall be President, the ring- 
leaders of a sordid coalition seek to blacken the character and 
belittle the achievements of a great soldier and a stainless patriot. 
You and I know the sin of this attempt, and we mean that the re- 
sult in November shall be not only a triumph, but a grand vindi- 
cation of Ulysses S. Grant. Rest assured that your labor is not 
in vain. The skies grow brighter every day. The clouds are 
breaking everywhere. Calumny after calumny aimed at Grant 
explodes, and wounds the inventors. 

Grant's fame is one of the treasures of the nation, and his 
name and his deeds will be held in grateful memory when his vili- 
fiers have moldered in forgotten graves and when their epitaphs 
have vanished utterly. But I am not going to make a speech. 
The work that we shall do will carry New York for Grant and 
Wilson, and in the triumph of November the soldiers of New York 
will wear new decorations. Thanking you for this visit, and wish- 
ing you prosperity and happiness, I again bid you welcome, and 
would gladly take you individually by the hand. 

The next day the RepubHcan State Convention 
assembled at Utica, and nominated John A. Dix 
for Governor and John C. Robinson for Lieuten- 
ant-Governor. During the months of September 
and October, Senator Conkhng was very active 
in the political field. He spoke at Watertown, 
Rochester, Buffalo, Glean, Brooklyn, Bath, Sara- 
toga, Albany, Utica, Norwich and Johnstown. 
In his many speeches he rarely repeated himself. 



448 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

During his remarks at Buffalo he thus spoke of the 
(then) recent settlement of the San Juan Islands 
question : 

* * * If it were earlier I would speak of the foreign pol- 
icy of the Administration: I would speak of that great treaty 
which has settled grave questions that previous Administrations 
which tried it had failed to settle: I would speak of that decision 
by Germany's great Emperor, who has determined the San Juan 
boundary, which, in Polk's administration, Calhoun tried to 
settle and could not, and that came near involving us in a war 
with England. * * * 

On the fifth day of November, 1872, the mem- 
orable election occurred. Grant and Wilson car- 
ried every Northern State. Grant's majority of 
the popular vote over that of Greeley was 763,007. 
In the Electoral College the Republican candidate 
received 286 votes and his opponent 18. Con- 
cerning the State ticket, John A. Dix obtained a 
majority of about 40,000 over Francis Kernan. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

HIS RE-ELECTION A LEGAL ARGUMENT AN OFFICIAL 

TRIP TO CANADA HE IS OFFERED THE CHIEF-JUS- 
TICESHIP AND DECLINES. 

IV/TR. CONKLING'S first term as Senator ex- 
pired March 4, 1873. ^ Republican Gov- 
ernor (John A. Dix) was inaugurated Monday, 
January 6. Two days later the joint caucus to 
nominate a United States Senator was held, and 
Roscoe Conkling, after receiving- glowing tributes 
from many Senators and Assemblymen, was, at 
the roll-call, named by every member present as 
his candidate. His formal re-election took place 
on the twenty-first instant. He received the full 
Republican vote in both Houses, with the follow- 
ing result: 

In the Senate : for Roscoe Conkling, twenty ; 
Charles G. Wheaton, five; Henry R. Selden, one; 
William M. Evarts, one. 

In the Assembly Roscoe Conkling received 
ninety-two votes, and Charles G. Wheaton twen- 
ty-six. 

29 449 



450 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONR'LING. 

During this period Senator Conkling was, where 
he should have been, at his post in Washington. 
There were no open parlors and bottles and un- 
worthy intrigues on this occasion. One reason for 
his success was his great personal triumph in the 
Presidential campaign of the previous summer. 

Of Mr. Conkling's Senatorial associates, all but 
eight were then his seniors in years. He was the 
first Republican to whom the people of New York 
have accorded the meed of a second term in the 
Senate. After this re-election he was praised by 
some Democratic papers — notably the New York 
World — which spoke of the "honest State pride 
in the reputation of so worthy a representative." 

Mr. Conkling's unanimous renomination indi- 
cated the unbroken integrity of the Republican 
party of New York after the long and fierce feuds 
of several years; and he continued to be the undis- 
puted Republican leader till his retirement in i8Si. 

We should remind the reader that about Decem- 
ber, 1870, Senator Conkling wished to resign in 
order to accept a place in a legal firm with the 
annual compensation of $50,000. He hesitated 
long and anxiously before he consented to be a 
candidate for re-election in 1873. To a friend he 
said, in substance, " I ought not to sacrifice an- 
other six years of time, worth at least $50,000 a 
year to me, for the paltry pittance paid for my 



THE SUCCESSOR OF GRANT. 45 I 

services In the Senate." He took the same view 
of his third election, in 1879, but for the sake of 
the Repubhcan cause he remained in pubhc Hfe. 

No sooner was he elected than the Repubhcan 
press of New York suggested him as a Presiden- 
tial candidate to succeed General Grant. Indeed, 
President Grant hoped to see Mr. Conkling" be- 
come his successor; and three years later Roscoe 
Conkling" was the unanimous choice of the New 
York delegation at the Republican National Con- 
vention. 

During the third session of the Forty-second 
Congress his part in the debates began with oppo- 
sition to the bill for the relief of Boston after the 
great fire of November, 1872. The measure pro- 
vided for a drawback of the duties to be paid upon 
" all materials imported into the port and district 
of Boston and Charlestown, and used in the con- 
struction and completion of buildings erected on 
the site of buildings burned " by the recent fire. 
Senator Conkling not only thought it was a dan- 
gerous precedent to establish but also appre- 
hended that the Boston relief bill was in violation 
of that provision of the Constitution which reads: 
" No preference shall be given by any regulation 
of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State 
over those of another." 

In December he presented petitions and memo- 



452 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



rials, signed by many citizens of New York, pray- 
ing for the prohibition of the manufacture, impor- 
tation and sale of intoxicating liquors within the 
Territories of the United States and within the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. 

He took an active part in the debates upon the 
" steamboat " bill, the French spoliation bill, the 
measure to remove obstructions in the channel-way 
off Sandy Hook ; and he favored the bills to 
endow agricultural colleges and to abolish the 
franking privilege. 

Mr. Conkling submitted, January 27, 1873, the 
following resolution, which was agreed to : 

Resolved, That the Committee on Public Buildings and 
Grounds be instructed to inquire into the expediency of making 
any use of the present Executive mansion other than that to 
which it is now devoted and of taking any steps to provide another 
residence for the President of the United States. 

This resolution may interest the reader, for the 
subject is now (under Mr. Harrison's administra- 
tion) widely discussed. 

The Senator afterward opposed an amendment 
to the bankrupt law, which sought to abolish a 
uniformsysi^m of bankruptcy ; e.g., a bankrupt in 
the State of Virginia was to be allowed to retain 
several times as much property as he could hold in 
another State. Later on. he took a prominent part 
in the debate upon counting the Presidential vote. 



OPPOSES THE BACK-PA V BILL. 453 

Near the close of the session he urged the inves- 
tigation of a charge of attempted bribery of a 
member of the Legislature of Kansas by a certain 
Senator, the allegation having been made by peti- 
tion signed by a citizen of that State. Referring 
to the importance of the investigation, he thus con- 
cluded his speech : 

But the thing which troubles me * * * is the danger 
of putting it in the hands, not of the Committee of the Senate, 
but of those engaged in introducing witnesses before it, to monop- 
olize and exhaust the residue of the session, and leave no pos- 
sible opportunity for this accused Senator to make his defence, if 
defence he has. 

A little before the end of the session he voted 
against the bill to increase salaries, then popularly 
known as " the back-pay grab." Notwithstanding 
his opposition, it became a law. He did not take 
his own back pay, and in the following winter 
(January 12, 1874) he successfully advocated a 
partial repeal of the objectionable act. His amend- 
ment repealed so much of the act of March 3, 1873, 
as provided for the increased compensation of 
public officers (members of Congress and Dele- 
gates) excepting the President and the Justices 
of the Supreme Court of the United States. Vide 
Congressional Rec 07' d, January 12, 1874, p. 578. 

Soon after the opening of the special session of 
the Senate, March 4, 1873, Mr. Conkling became 
a member of the following Committees : Foreign 



454 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF J? OS CO E CONK LING. 



Relations, Commerce, Judiciary, and (chairman of) 
Revision of the Laws of the United States. The 
last-named Committee was a very important one. 
His thorough knowledge of the common law and 
his great familiarity with federal statutes fitted 
him for this position. This work was very engross- 
ing, especially as it related to the Southern States. 
He was also a member of the Select Committee 
on " Transportation Routes to the Seaboard." 

Early in the special session Senator Morton, of 
Indiana, introduced a resolution declaring that 
Mr. Caldwell, of Kansas, had not been duly elected 
a Senator from the State of Kansas. This resolu- 
tion was the chief topic of debate during the short 
session. The Committee on Privileges and Elec- 
tions reported the resolution for the reason that 
the members of the Committee were of opinion 
that the members of the Legislature of the State 
of Kansas, by whose votes Mr. Caldwell was de- 
clared elected as Senator, were either bribed or 
unduly influenced to give him their votes. 

Senator Morton, of Indiana, the chairman of the 
Committee, stated in debate that the Senate might 
either declare that Mr. Caldwell was never duly 
elected, or he might be expelled from the Senate. 
Mr. Conkling maintained the doctrine that the 
expulsion of Mr. Caldwell was the only legal 
remedy at the command of the Senate. 



THE ELECTION OF SENA TOR CALD WELL. 



455 



He took issue, March 12, with Senators Morton 
and Thurman concerning- the appHcation of the 
two celebrated cases of Walter Long and Arthur 
Halle in English history, which were prior to any- 
British statute. Here the House of Commons 
avoided an election, and held it to be null and 
void because of bribery by a member. Senator 
Conkling also read from Male on Elections and 
from Burrows, and thoroughly discussed the 
clause of the Constitution referrinor to elections. 

On the nineteenth of March he had the floor 
nearly three hours and finished his speech on the 
following day.^* 

The Washington correspondent of the Boston 
Journal, under date of March 19, 1873, thus de- 
scribes the effect of Senator Conkling's speech : 

For three hours this afternoon did Mr. Roscoe Conkling, of New 
York, address the Senate on the Caldwell case with a thrilling pow- 
er of eloquence rarely equalled in the capitol. The clearness and 
vigor of his remarks commanded the attention alike of those in the 
galleries and those on the floor, and he was listened to with undi- 
vided interest as he gradually built up his argument, leaving no 
stone upturned as he proceeded. His statements of facts were con- 
cise, his illustrations were copious, and occasionally he spiced his 
remarks with a bit of fierce sarcasm, of bitter invective, which even 
his enemies, the correspondents' " syndicate," could but admire. 

Mr. Caldwell resigned March 24, 1S73, and two 
days later the Senate adjourned. 

* Mr. Conkling's remarks on March 19 and 20 would fill sixty pages of 
this memoir. 



456 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

During the summer Senator Conkling argued 
in the Circuit Court of the United States before 
Mr. Justice Hunt a very important case concern- 
ing the jurisdiction of the States over their navi- 
gable waters. The point was the apphcation for 
an injunction to restrain the building of a bridge 
over the Hudson River at Troy. 

William A. Beach was of counsel for the appli- 
cants, and argued the case with his well-known 
learning and ability, Mr. Conkling appearing in 
opposition. The question involved the construc- 
tion of the clause of the national Constitution giv- 
ing to Congress the exclusive power to regulate 
commerce among the several States; it being con- 
tended that this bridge obstructed the free naviga- 
tion of the river and was thus illeofal. Mr. Conk- 
ling, in an elaborate argument, exhausted all 
the learning on the subject. He reviewed all 
the cases upon the subject from the Wheeling 
bridge case down, and discussed the authorities 
upon the general principles applicable to the 
case. 

This argument should be preserved in every 
law library, containing, as it does, references to all 
the law and important decisions on the matter of 
the bridging of navigable rivers and the jurisdic- 
tion of the States over their naviofable waters. It 
is also a very clear and comprehensive discussion 



THE TROY BRIDGE CASE. 457 

of the " power " granted to Congress by the Con- 
stitution " to regulate commerce with foreign 
nations and among the several States." 

He appeared, as stated, in oppositiofi to a mo- 
tion for an injunction to restrain the erection of 
a bridge over the Hudson River at Troy. The 
motion had been made by parties engaged in 
transportation by the Erie Canal and the Hud- 
son River. It was denied, and the bridge was 
built. 

The following is a cogent illustration from his 
argument: 

The tread of man has been ever on lines of latitude rather 
than on lines of longitude. This is the fiat of Nature's laws. 
The geography of America directs the destiny of population 
and enterprise eastward and westward in an orbit belting the 
globe with industries and commerce. 

The rivers of America flow north and south; and it would be 
pitiable indeed if a civilization which, in its impetuous ca- 
reer, tunnels and levels mountains, ploughs through cities, and 
flings down and tramples out the habitations of the living and 
the sepulchres of the dead, could be baffled by a sacred and im- 
passable barrier, where a licensed canal-boat wallows in the 
coasting trade. The history of every river and the policy and 
jurisprudence of every State laugh at such a theory. Man 
shrinks from crossing isothermal lines, and the products of the 
earth will not endure different zones and climes; the breadstuffs 
of the West perish in the tropics, and wheat and corn from 
Northern prairies will not bear transportation through the delta 
of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. 

Thus, tracks across the continent, on which travel and traffic 
may sweep from sea to sea, stayed by no obstacle which science 
can surmount, are as inevitable as the decrees of fate. 



458 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

This case is reported in Blatchford's Circuit 
Court Reports.* 

The United States Senate Committee on Trans- 
portation Routes, of which Mr. Conkhng was a 
member, visited Montreal in September. They 
were met by the United States Consul-General 
and the president of the Board of Trade, the 
Hon. John Young, M. P., and members of the 
Corn Exchange. The entire party then went on 
board the steamer Bohemia, which had been 
chartered by the Board to take their visitors up 
the Lachine Canal and down the Lachine Rapids. 
When half-way through the canal the United 
States Senate Committee and the gentlemen with 
them were invited to a banquet in the saloon. 
After the repast the president of the Board of 
Trade made a brief speech, and was followed by 
Senators Windom and Norwood. Mr. Conkling 
was the next speaker. He said: 

* * * Between the watersheds of our continent lies a granary 
which holds the food of the world. Part of this bread-field be- 
longs to the United States. We have a basin 2,000 miles long, 
1,400 miles wide, and the cereals which may grow there, and the 
cattle which may graze there, added to those which British Amer- 
ica can produce, are enough to feed all Christendom. 

The value of property in this hemisphere is no longer in what 
it is, but in where it is. No product is valuable in some places. 
All products are valuable if you can place them where the needs 

* Mr. Conkling's argument was printed in pamphlet form, and he sent 
many copies of it to his friends. 



A STA TESMANLIKE ADDRESS. 



459 



of man require them. Now we doubtfully contest the wavering 
balance of trade with Russia in respect to her supply of wheat to 
Great Britain. Why? Because to bring a bushel of wheat from 
Chicago to the Atlantic costs us thirty cents. Russia can do 
it equally cheap, including the cost of production. How can 
you and how can we change all this? By finding a route by the 
St. Lawrence or by any other channel by which you can reach 
the seaboard for fifteen cents a bushel. Do this, and Russia no 
longer can hold dispute in the markets of the world. Russia is 
no longer the rival of British America or of the United States. 

Thus far our needs and our destinies are alike and identical, and 
we have come here to learn how to contribute to a common object. 
But there is a point at which the lines of interest part. Between 
producers and shippers there is no difference, whether they live 
north or south of the St. Lawrence. But you in Canada are con- 
testing with us for supremacy in the carrying trade. Here rivalry 
and competition begin — and we mean not to be outstripped by you 
or by anybody else. One of the problems of our statesmanship is to 
grasp for the United States all the carrying trade on land and sea 
which we can win in the battle of competition. Where our inter- 
ests are alike, we will join you; where our interests differ, we will 
engage you in a generous rivalry, a friendly grapple for the mas- 
tery; but hostility or jealousy toward you has no place in Ameri- 
can councils. 

Speaking for the producers of the United States, the capital- 
ist, the man whose industry is to grow or carry the products of 
the forest, the field, or the mine, I say that no antagonism ex- 
ists beyond the competition which alone gives inspiration to en- 
terprise or progress. Cheap transportation, by whatever route, 
is doubly interesting to us in the States, A ruthless rebellion 
rolled upon us a great debt which burdens our people, though 
they steadily and bravely melt it away. Show us how to transport 
cheaply the growth of the West into the port of New York, and 
our debt vanishes like the shadow of a passing hour. Cheap tran- 
sit is, indeed, the great material question of the hour. We are 
all in earnest about it, and we shall be in earnest more and more. 

I know not for whom I have authority to speak here. Not for 
the great State of New York, whose destinies and honor are so 



460 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

dear to me. She has sent through her Legislature tried and trusted 
men, and they speak for her. There is no other State for which 
I may speak, certainly not for all, and therefore I speak only for 
myself. So speaking, I believe that in the East and the West 
the problem of creating channels for commerce will assert itself 
and hold supremacy until it is successfully solved. How our 
Government will act cannot now be foretold ; but wisely, thorough- 
ly and promptly they will keep abreast of the times and break 
the way for future generations. In your efforts to improve facili- 
ties we bid you God-speed. There is enough for all and to spare. 
In this belief I give you a sentiment. 

"British America and the United States: may they unite in 
advancing industry, civilization and progress, and may they unite 
also in generous rivalry for primacy in the enterprise and com- 
merce of the world." 



The Republican State Convention for the nom- 
ination of State officers below the rank of Lieu- 
tenant-Governor met at Utica, September 24, 1873. 
Senator Conkling did not attend, but at his sug- 
gestion a resolution condemning the back-pay bill 
of Congressmen, and pledging the Republican 
party to repeal the objectionable features at the 
coming session of Congress, was introduced and 
adopted. 

Chief-Justice Salmon P. Chase died May 7, 1873. 
During the recess of the Senate, public men and 
the press named Mr. Conkling as the proper suc- 
cessor. No other lawyer was so generally sug- 
gested. In November, 1873, he received the letter 
which, together with the reply, is here inserted in 
facsimile. 



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DECLINES THE CHIEF-JUSTICESHIP. 46 1 

in declininor the offer of the Chief-Justiceship 
the Senator made this characteristic remark: "I 
could not take the place, for I would be forever / 
gnawing my chains." A born controversialist, 
his love of argument led him to take part in a 
discussion rather than to become a listener. 

The foUowmg article, from the Utica Morning 
Herald of Wednesday, November 26, 1873, con- 
cerning Mr. Conkling as Chief-Justice, was an in- 
dication of public sentiment: 

The impression is growing into conviction that, in accordance 
with the very general preference of. lawyers and publicists, Pres- 
ident Grant will nominate Hon. Roscoe Conkling for Chief-Jus- 
tice, and he will doubtless be promptly confirmed by the Senate. 
We have no information on the subject not possessed by the 
public, and we understand that Mr. Conkling gives no intimation 
whether the place has been tendered to him, nor whether, if of- 
fered, he would accept it. The tendency of discussion, however, 
is to the conclusion that the commission will be offered and will 
be accepted. * * * 

Because national legislation is liable to come into review by 
the Supreme Court, it is of the first importance that the new 
Chief-Justice should be in accord with the principles settled by 
the war. * * * As it is essential that a Chief-Justice should 
accept the Constitution without reserve, it is just and proper that 
he should be in accord with that body of the laws which the sac- 
rifice of blood has made holy, and in which stability is of the very 
first consequence. As one of the active and efficient legislators 
throughout the period of Reconstruction, Mr. Conkling must have 
a deep and complete appreciation of the new testament of our 
Constitution. 

The Chief-Justice should be an eminent jurist. The criticism 
has been made that Mr. Conkling's services in the national coun- 
cils have interfered with his devotion to the technicalities of the 



462 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

law. The breadth of this criticism is that he is more of a states- 
man than a lawyer. If the choice must be between broad and 
profound comprehension of the spirit of law, and narrow conver- 
sance with the letter of statutes, it will be wise to prefer the former, 
which is the higher quality, because the latter can be added by 
study. But the situation is not of that nature. Mr. Conkling 
has been engaged in intricate and difficult litigations in all of the 
higher courts. The universal testimony is that his preparation 
is always accurate and very full. He grasps the broader views 
of the controversy, but is always familiar with the details of 
statutes and the whole array of authorities. If he were less a 
statesman, he would perhaps have more credit as a technical 
lawyer. But in every case which he tries, the elaborate detail of 
information zvhich he exhibits must be recognized, even if it fades 
before the poiver of his logic, the brilliance of his rhetoric, and his 
ability to lift a commonplace suit above mere technicality to the plane 
of equity atid of principle. 

This is due to that which is one of Mr. Conkling' s strongest 
traits — the po7ver of effective ivork. If genius is a different thing, 
it must have this ally to possess practical value. In all that relates 
to the bench, and to decisions which are to live, industry must direct 
brains. Investigation must be thorough; discjission must be ex- 
haustive; statements must be clear, direct, forcible. It is no dispar- 
agement to others to say that in all of these things the superiority of 
Mr. Conkling is recognized by friend and foe. 

Going upon the bench in the maturity of manhood, with a full 
familiarity with the greatest subjects which can come before him, 
with a high appreciation of the dignity and the requirements of 
the position, Mr. Conkling will carry all the abilities which have 
placed him, by common consent, among the clearest reasoncrs of the 
Senate in this or any previous day. If he is young, he will grow 
older; and the court, already a little heavy with years, will gain 
by his vigor and be brought abreast with the generation. // is 
not every Senator who can be wisely transferred to the bench. The 
legal acumen, the keenness of analysis, the grasp of logic, and the 
far-reaching comprehension of Mr. Conkling explain the tnarked 
unanimity ivith 7vhich his fello7v Senators, of both parties, unite to 
pronounce him, taken all in all, the fittest choice for Chief- Justice. 



SENATOR'S LETTER TO MR. CORNELL. 463 

The question of acceptance involves elements personal to Mr. 
Conkling. So far as it depends upon public considerations, they 
are already stated. For a lawyer no higher station can exist than 
that of Chief-Justice for life of the United States Supreme Court. 
The general verdict in favor of Mr. Conkling for that position will 
go far to determine the action of the President and of Mr. Conk- 
ling himself, if doubt yet remains in the mind of either. 

After Mr. Conkling's refusal to accept the Chief- 
Justiceship, the President nominated for this place 
George H. Williams, of Oregon. The Senate, how- 
ever, refused to act upon his name, and in Janu- 
ary, 1874, Senator Conkling was again urged to 
reconsider his decision. Two of the most influen- 
tial Senators assured him that if he would allow 
the use of his name he would be promptly con- 
firmed; but he would not consent, and soon after- 
ward Morrison R. Waite, of Ohio, became the 
successor of Chief-Justice Chase. 

The following letter explains itself: 

Washington, January 18, 1874. 
Hon. A. B. Cornell, 

Dear Sir: The country seems to require that the Chief-Jus- 
tice should possess high character, sound principles, great capac- 
ity and wide celebrity. 

It is not easy to fill that bill. One has been condemned be- 
cause he wanted celebrity, another because he lacked principle. 
The President is forced to another selection. It seems highly 
probable he will name Mr. Waite, of Ohio. We are convinced 
Mr. Waite has every requisite except repute. But it may be ob- 
jected to Mr. Waite that he is the third or fourth choice and that 
he is unknown. If Mr. Conkling could now take the place, it 
would be confirmed on the President's first choice, instead of his 



464 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

fourth. No one could deny the possession of every other requi- 
site, and it would be most manifest that the ofifice sought the in- 
cumbent, not the incumbent the office. We have the best of evi- 
dence that the President would like to renew the offer to Mr. 
Conkling. We have some reason to believe that he might now 
accept the appointment with less embarrassment to his friends 
than when it was first tendered him. But we do not know how to 
reach him, and so we venture to address you, knowing you to be 
friendly to the party, to the Administration, and to Mr. Conk- 
ling. If you will say to us by twelve o'clock to-morrow that Mr. 
Conkling will accept, he can be made Chief-Justice by four p. m. 

Very truly yours, 

T. O. Howe. 
H. Hamlin. 
P. S. — There can be no doubt that we are acting in harmony 
with our friends here. H. H. 

The following answer was sent: 

Washington, January 19. i 
12:25 p. M., U. S. Senate. \ 
Hon. Timothy O. Howe: 

Repeated back. I am satisfied that circumstances render it in- 
admissible for the person you name to do as you propose. 

A. B. Cornell, 



^45 



1 8 74. 
CHAPTER XXIV. 

SENATORIAL DEBATES — FINANCIAL MEASURES A CELE- 
BRATED CASE. 

/^N the opening day of the first session of the 
Forty-third Congress Mr. ConkUng intro- 
duced a bill " Relating to certain moneys appro- 
priated to members of Congress." Senator Wright, 
of Iowa, the same day introduced a bill "To re- 
peal so much of the act of March 3, 1873, as in- 
creases the salaries therein named." 

Senator Conkling's measure was according to 
an intention he had formed at the previous session. 
We have already given its fate. Mr. Wright's 
bill was more radical, for he proposed to repeal 
the increase of all salaries, which would, of course, 
include that of the President ($50,000). It is un- 
necessary to say that Mr. Wright's measure was 
not enacted. 

A bill to repeal the bankrupt law was soon in- 
troduced. Mr. Conkling presented memorials of 
leading business firms in New York and Brooklyn 

remonstrating against the repeal and suggesting 
30 465 



A 



466 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

certain amendments. He afterward offered peti- 
tions of a few merchants in Central New York 
praying for the passage of the bill. 

In consequence of the then recent fatal collision 
of the steamer Ville du Havj'-e and the ship Tri- 
in^ountain, Mr. Conkling presented a memorial from 
the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New 
York praying "That an international commission 
be appointed to consider the question of collisions 
upon the crowded vessel-track on the ocean be- 
tween Europe and this country, and to devise 
such regulations as may hereafter guard human 
life." 

In March Senator Conkling spoke briefly con- 
cerninof the deaths of ex-President Fillmore and 
Charles Sumner. 

During the remainder of the session much of the 
time of the Senate was spent in the consideration 
of bills referring to the liquor traffic commission, 
the national bank circulation, currency and bank- 
ing, the Geneva award, the Louisville and Port- 
land Canal, the Centennial exhibition, the security 
of life on steam vessels, moieties under the cus- 
toms laws, and appropriations for the payment of 
claims reported by the Claims Commissioners. 

In all these measures Mr. Conkling bore a con- 
spicuous part. We have, however, space only for 
an account of his part in the legislation upon 



THREE IMPORTANT BILLS. 467 

the national banks and the currency. Three bills 
were pending before the Senate ; first, an amend- 
ment of an act entitled " An act to provide a 
national currency secured by a pledge of United 
States bonds and to provide for the circulation 
and redemption thereof," approved June 3, 1864 ; 
second, a bill to amend the act entitled, " An act 
to provide for the redemption of the three per 
cent, temporary loan certificates and for an in- 
crease of national bank notes," approved July 12, 
1870 ; and third, " A bill for the retirement of the 
national bank notes, for the refunding of the non- 
taxable bonds into a five and a half per cent, in- 
terchangeable bond, and for the resumption of 
specie payments." The last-named measure was 
not reported, but as a substitute the following was 
introduced, •' A bill to provide for the redemption 
and re-issue of United States notes and for free 
banking." 

The first-named bill was introduced by Mr. 
Conkling January 29, 1874, and in April it was 
reported in an amended form from the Finance 
Committee. 

Concerning the second-named measure Senator 
Conkling spoke briefly, February 19, 1874. His 
voice and his vote were uniformly in favor of the 
good faith and honest currency of the republic, 
for he was glad to advocate a measure that made 



468 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

our currency the equivalent of gold in the markets 
of the world. 

During the latter part of March Senator Conk- 
ling took a prominent part in the debate upon the 
national bank circulation. He presented a memo- 
rial from merchants of the city of New York, de- 
claring the belief "that an additional issue of 
paper money would be injurious to the public in- 
terests" and "that the country is now and has 
been for years suffering from an excess of paper 
money," and praying "that measures be adopted 
such as will lead to the resumption of specie pay- 
ments at the earliest time practicable." 

In the course of his remarks upon this memo- 
rial Mr. Conkling said : 

* * * There is one financial position and one need, in 
which all men agree — the expansionist, the contractionist, the 
Democrat, the Republican, the importer, the business man, the 
workingman, every constituent of society — and that is that the 
great duty and need of the hour is to see to it that whatever is to 
be done or omitted on this subject shall be at once. Everywhere 
the testimony is that the spring business is halting, in a large de- 
gree paralyzed, owing to the uncertainty in which the country is 
kept, owing to the fact that no man knows by what yardstick he 
is to measure, by what volume of currency or standard of value 
he is to calculate; and the whole business community is waiting, 
until the spring business is threatened, and until it has already 
been greatly injured. 

In the early part of April the Senate, in Com- 
mittee of the Whole, considered the bill to provide 



GRANT'S BRAVE VETO. 469 

for the redemption and re-issue of United States 
notes and for free banking. Mr. Conkling vigor- 
ously opposed this measure, but it passed by five 
majority. 

On the twenty-second of April President Grant 
returned this bill (which was popularly known as 
the "inflation bill") to the Senate with his objec- 
tions. Senator Conkling, on the same day, moved 
to lay on the table the veto message of the Presi- 
dent and to take it up at a proper time unless an- 
ticipated by some other Senator. 

General Grant's famous veto of the " inflation " 
bill was perhaps his most important official act 
during his two Presidential terms. While the biog- 
rapher does not wish to rob President Grant of 
the credit due him for defeating such a harmful 
measure, he wishes to state that Mr. Conkling 
strongly urged him to disapprove the bill. 

A leading newspaper, in an obituary of Senator 
Conkling, says: " One of his most signal services 
to the country was the influence which he exerted 
over President Grant in advising him to veto the 
pernicious measure known as the inflation bill." 

Another newspaper, in a similar article, stated 
that " Senator Conkling's position on the veto of 
the inflation measure of 1874 made him the leader 
of the Senate." 

This action of the President was regarded by 



470 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Senator Morton and others as confirming the 
position of Mr. ConkUng as the exponent of the 
Administration pohcy. Mr. Morton gracefully 
recognized the fact from this period. 

It is worthy of remark that President Grant 
was advised by many friends to sign this bill, and, 
the author is informed by a member of the Cab- 
inet, that the President wrote a message of ap- 
proval to see how it would read. He then told 
his Cabinet at the next meeting that he could see 
no reason for approving the measure, and forth- 
with sent to the Senate the following message: 

Herewith I return Senate bill No. 617, entitled "an act to 
fix the amount of United States notes, and the circulation of 
national banks, and for other purposes," without my approval. 
In doing so I must express my regret at not being able to give 
my assent to a measure which has received the sanction of a 
majority of the legislators chosen by the people to make laws 
for their guidance, and I have studiously sought to find sufhcient 
arguments to justify such assent, but unsuccessfully.* 

Concerning the "inflation" veto. Senator Conk- 
ling wrote the following letter: 

Wednesday Evening, April 24, 1874. 
My Dear Mr. President : 

My daughter says you are going out this evening, so I 
do not come, as I would do, to express my admiration for your lat- 
est proof that you are as great as any duty ever set before you. 

* Some writers have since attributed to others (ex-President Hayes 
and John Sherman) the chief credit of maintaining the honor and good 
faith of the nation. 



WRITES TO PRESIDENT GRANT. 471 

I send a telegram, the first to come from President Andrew 
D White I go in the morning on an errand to New York, to 
be back, however, in season to give my mite to the vindication 
of your position and your fame. 

Your friend and servant, 

ROSCOE CONKLTNG. 

The President of the United States. 

In later years Mr. Conkling often spoke of the 
veto, but especially in his long speech at the 
Academy of Music in New York, September 17, 
1880, when he referred to the great work of 
resumption and discussed the " brave veto" of 
the inflation bill by President Grant. He also 
referred to a conversation at the White House. 

This speech is referred to in Chapter XXXIL, 
but we here give a brief extract, which includes 
the opinion of General Grant. 

Senator Conkling said : 

About a month later a conversation occurred one evening 

between the President and his chief advisers. Secretary Fish and 

others, about the wise course out of the increased difficulties 

which had come from the disasters of the year before. One 

of those present at this conversation was Senator Jones, of 

Nevada So struck was he with the views expressed by President 

Grant that the next day (June 4, i874) he by letter requested 

that the substance of them should be put in writing, and a copy 

sent him. This was done, and the memorandum made by the 

President was handed about among members of the two Houses, 

and afterward found its way into print. Here it is. It is the 

foreshadow of the resumption act, to which the veto had paved 

the way. I will read two passages: _ 

- I believe it a high and plain duty to return to a specie basis 
at the earliest practical day, not only in compliance with legisla- 



472 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

tive and party pledges, but as a step indispensable to lasting 
national prosperity. I believe, further, that the time has come 
when this can be done, or at least begun, with less embarrassment 
to every branch of industry than at any future time after resort 
has been had to unstable and temporary expedients to stimulate 
unreal prosperity and speculation on a basis other than coin, 
the recognized medium of exchange throughout the commercial 
world. The particular mode selected to bring about a restora- 
tion of the specie standard is not of so much consequence as 
that some plan be devised, the time fixed when currency shall be 
exchangeable for coin at par, and the plan adopted rigidly 
adhered to. * * * I would like to see a provision that at a 
fixed day, say July i, 1876, the currency issued by the United 
States should be redeemed in coin on presentation to any as- 
sistant treasurer, and that all the currency so redeemed should 
be canceled and never re-issued. To effect this, it would be 
necessary to authorize the issue of bonds payable in gold, bear- 
ing such interest as would command par in gold, to be put out 
by the Treasury only in such sums as should from time to time 
be needed for the purpose of redemption." 

On the fourteenth of May the then all-impor- 
tant question of free banking and the currency 
was under consideration. Senator ConkUng made 
a notable speech upon the amendment offered by 
him to Mr. Sherman's bill. The speech was so 
short and significant that we give it in full: 

I have few words to say upon this amendment. It is offered 
in satisfaction of a complaint that inequality exists between States 
in respect of bank circulation. Lack of equality is a complaint 
always to be heeded. I forbear to dwell now upon the cause of 
the particular inequality in question. I say nothing of the fact 
that strenuous and hostile measures and efforts brought the banks 
of the States under the national system and caused them to ac- 
cept circulation offered them for want of other takers. Suffice it 



A SPEECH ON BANK CIRCULATION 473 

to say that New York and some other States have more than their 
quota respectively of bank circulation. 

My amendment will change this. Forty-six million was the 
increase of bank circulation provided by a measure devised by 
expansionists, which lately won its way in vain through the Sen- 
ate. The amendment adopts the same sum, and places it all at 
the disposal of deficient States as soon and as fast as they will 
take it. If the offer be accepted, well; if it be refused, for one 
I shall seek the best thing then to be hoped for during this ses- 
sion of Congress. I mean no action whatever touching the finan- 
ces, and no attempt at future legislation. 

In the present mood and temper of Congress, if this tender of 
banking advantages be not accepted, the best thing left is an end 
of the session, a despatch of needful legislation, the appropriation 
bills, the civil rights bill, and but little else, and then an early 
adjournment. We can thus take down the sword— the sword 
which has been hanging by a hair for five months over the head 
of every business man, while Congress has drifted upon a sea of 
talk. When the industries of the country are relieved from the 
suspense springing from the dread that Congress may do we know 
not what, when the incubus of uncertainty is lifted from enter- 
prise and labor, the energy of the nation will in some measure re- 
trieve and vindicate itself. We can at least leave trade free to 
fight its own battle; we can take the hands of Congress off its 
throat. An adjournment will do this. If, however, accepting 
$46,000,000 as the need of deficient States in respect of bank cir- 
culation, the Senators representing the sections in which the need 
is supposed to exist v/ill unite with Senators representing the 
States from which it is to be taken, we can redress the only griev- 
ance which has even an apparent reality. 

Therefore, although this amendment may deprive New York 
and other States of some bank circulation, without expressing any 
opinion now upon the justice or injustice of the complaint made, 
or its good or bad faith, without attempting to forecast the result 
which alone can show whether a real need of bank currency ex- 
ists, I will vote for the amendment because it will present to the 
option of deficient States all that we have been told by their Sena- 
tors they need or think they need. 



474 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF R OS COR CONK' LING. 



In the debate upon the supplementary civil rights 
bill, Mr. Conkling in the course of his remarks said: 

* * * It (the bill) punishes the keeper of an inn who com- 
mits indignity and violence upon a man, not because he is drunk, 
not because he is boisterous, not because he is offensive, not be- 
cause he is unclean, not because he is a pauper and unable to pay, 
not because he awakens hostility for any reason which concerns 
the interest or the right of him who visits him with indignity and 
wrong. It punishes only the man who indulges in assault, in op- 
probrium, in injury of his fellow-man, merely because he cherishes 
a lawless prejudice, merely because he carries in his heart a base 
and paltry hate insulting to the spirit and civilization of the age, 
a hate which has been trampled out on this continent in blood, it 
is to be hoped forever. A man who sins thus deliberately, who in 
cold blood selects as the object of his vengeance and injustice the 
most inoffensive, the most friendless, the most unarmed, member 
of society, puts himself beyond the pale of that extenuation due 
to all offences committed where some lion-like temptation springs 
upon the judgment and overpowers it before resistance can begin.* 

•3«- * * ^f * -Jt * 

In 1885 he wrote a long letter declining an in- 
vitation to address colored men, and signed him- 
self " Your obedient servant." 

The Senator soon afterward considered the bill 
for the creation of a court for the adjudication 
and disposition of certain moneys received into 
the Treasury under an award made by the tribunal 
of arbitration constituted by virtue of the first 
article of the treaty concluded at Washington 
May 8, 1871, between the United States and the 

* Mr. Conkling once said : " Whenever I see a black man, I always feel 
that I am with a friend." 



A CELEBEATED TAX SUIT. 475 

Queen of Great Britain. Flere Mr. Conkling op- 
posed the amendment of Mr. Thurman concerning 
the claims of insurance companies or insurers. 
During- the remainder of the session Senator 
Conkhng, as chairman of the Committee for the 
Revision of the Laws, spent much time in perfect- 
ing three bills to revise and consolidate the stat- 
utes of the United States in force on December i, 

1873. 

In the spring of 1874 Mr. Conkling appeared as 
counsel in a suit brought by the New York Cen- 
tral and Hudson River Railroad Company against 
the Collector of Internal Revenue to recover the 
amount of a tax assessed upon and forcibly col- 
lected from that corporation. 

This case was begun in the New York Supreme 
Court for Albany County May 21, 1873. Two 
days later the complaint was served. It demanded 
judgment in round numbers for $600,000. Sidney 
T. Fairchild was the attorney of record; and Rich- 
ard Crowley, the United States Attorney, appeared 
for the defendant. The suit was at once removed 
to the United States Circuit Court for the Northern 
District of New York. The defendant's attorney 
filed, June 21, 1873, the amended plea and notice 
of special matter in the Circuit Court of the United 
States at Canandaigua. 

The following digest of this important case is 



476 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

taken from Mr. Conkling's appellate brief, and we 
print it to give the reader some idea of the suit. 

The action is, in substance, trespass, for seizing property and 
exacting money of the plaintiff below, amounting to $594,002.89. 

The sole defence is a justification under an alleged assessment 
on a *• scrip dividend," and distraint under said assessment. The 
issue is the validity of the assessment and distraint, and this issue, 
should the assessment and distraint be found regular in them- 
selves, will embrace the inquiry whether certain "certificates" 
were or were not taxable under one of the income sections of the 
internal revenue acts. 

******* 

The act of assessment was without notice or proceeding, as 
required by the statute. The assessor, at the dictation of another 
person not authorized to make assessments, sat down alone in his 
office, without notice to anybody, and noted on a paper a sup- 
posed total of certificates issued, which total he took from a doc- 
ument theretofore printed by the Legislature of New York, and 
which total was proved on the trial to be erroneous by a million 
dollars or thereabouts. This paper, stating that a five per cent. 
tax was due on the total thus assessed, and stating that the cor 
poration which issued the certificates was charged with the tax 
and a penalty of $1,000 besides, was handed to the Collector the 
day after it was made. 

Nothing else by way of assessment was ever done. No hear- 
ing was allowed or time permitted. No regular list or roll, an- 
nual or special, was proved, but the Collector, by notice (not in 
itself complying with the statute) to the extinct corporation, and 
eventually, after nearly two years, by notice inaccurately address- 
ed to the defendant in error, demanded payment of the assess- 
ment. 

Still later, six-fifteenths of the assessment in lieu of the whole 
was required, and finally the Collector issued, in succession, to his 
deputy three warrants, two against the old company or the de- 
fendant in error in the alternate, and one against the plaintiff alone. 

On these three warrants seizures were made of property of 
great value, none of which had ever belonged to the company 



A CELEBRATED TAX SUIT, 477 

assessed; and under threats that all its property would be seized, 
the defendant in error paid $594,002.89, at the same time pro- 
testing. 

Pending this exaction, the question of the liability of the cer- 
tificates to taxation was referred by the revenue bureau to its law 
officer, the solicitor, and he, in a written opinion, held that the 
certificates were not among the objects of taxation visited by the 
revenue acts. The matter was still later submitted by the Treas- 
ury Department to ex-Commissioner of Internal Revenue William 
Orton, ex-Supervisor of Internal Revenue John F. Sm)^th, and 
Ralph P. Lathrop, the Assessor who, under direction, had made 
the so-called assessment. This board of arbitrators, or commis- 
sioners, decided that the certificates were not taxable. 

This cause was tried at Canandaigua before the 
Hon. William J. Wallace and a jury. Mr. Fairchild 
opened the case, and Senator Conkling summed 
up. Mr. Conkling's connection with this suit led 
to a very unjust attack upon him by opposition 
journals. Knowing well the provisions of section 
1782, of the Revised Statutes of the United States, 
he had refused to have anything to do with the 
case while it was pending before the Treasury De- 
partment. It was only when the Government h.ad 
collected the assessment, and after the cause had 
been transferred to a court of law, where he could 
deal with it in a purely professional capacity, that 
Mr. Conklinor acceoted a retainer from the railroad 
company. He was confident that the assessment 
was illegal, and having his livelihood to earn by 
his profession, he undertook to recover the amount 
alleged to be due. Yet he was falsely accused of 



478 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

bringing political influence to bear upon the case. 
It was insinuated that the Judge and the District- 
Attorney had been appointed by the aid of Sena- 
tor Conkling, and that they would hesitate to op- 
pose him. On the contrary, it was said the Judge 
was predisposed to decide against the railroad 
company, and the United States Attorney had 
made most complete preparation for the trial. 
Although on nearly all of the issues raised the 
rulings of the Judge were strongly against the 
plaintiffs, he finally decided that the assessment 
was illegal, for under the law he could see no 
alternative.* 

Mr. Conkling's summing up is too long to print. 
The evidence at the trial was largely documentary, 
and he commented upon it at great length. He 
replied to his public defamers and vindicated 
himself. 

He thus closed his argument: 

* * * If your Honor please, I have done with this case. 
I have attempted to discuss it, perhaps at needless length. I have 
tried to show that, regardless of the original liability, the assess- 
ment, so called, the alleged authority to the Collector, and his 
warrants to his deputy, together with the seizures and enforced 
collections, were all in flagrant violation of law. I have attempted 

* It should be remarked that the federal judges in the State of New 
York, who were appointed partly through the influence of Mr. Conkling, 
were very apt, when he appeared before them, to rule against him. On 
more than one occasion he was prevented from earning a legal fee through 
the over -sensitiveness of a judge to the slanderers of the hour. 



A STRONG ARGUMENT. 479 

also to show that the proceedings of the directors of the New York 
Central Railroad Company, on the nineteenth of December, 1868, 
did not constitute the declaration of a taxable dividend. If I 
have failed to establish these positions, the fault is my own. They 
are, I believe, plainly demonstrable; and it is fortunate that they 
will be determined on their merits, and by the argument of my 
associate, and not by my argument alone. I submit them to 
your Honor, and I leave this case, perhaps forever, with two 
remarks. 

This issue has, for years, been tried in bar-rooms, in street- 
cars, in newspaper offices and in other places where men and 
gossippers most do congregate. It has been tried ex parte; it has 
been used as a theme to feed the distemper and craze of these 
times — that craze of suspicion and disbelief which doubts the 
honesty of every one and everything; which shakes its head, and 
wrings its hands, and carps and decries continually; that distem- 
per which insists that public and private action on every side is false 
and venal, and that whatever is, is v/rong. To libel the days in 
which we are living, and to deride the purity and uprightness of 
those who conduct affairs, is now so generally the fashion that 
of course hard names must be called and gross insinuations 
made, when a question arises whether certain written instruments 
are taxable or not. Accordingly, it has been said, and published, 
that the issue of the certificates in question was dishonest, and 
that the actors in the transaction were steeped to the eyes in 
trickery and deceit. My associate, as counsel, took part in the 
affair, and others also, whom your Honor knows as men of spot- 
less character and incapable of fraud. 

When the question of the tax arose, detraction again loosed 
its tongue, and the public ear was dinned with new accusations. 
It was said that the tax was clearly due, that everybody knew it, 
that the Company and its ofificers were trying to wriggle and twist 
out of a tax which all honest or patriotic men would pay, and that 
the question was whether the treasury officials would stand up 
against a rich corporation, or whether they would be corrupted. 

When the matter was presented for decision to the Commis- 
sioner of Internal Revenue and to the Secretary of the Treasury, 
both these officers were warned, by clamor, that their reputations 



480 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

would be blackened if they decided in favor of the Company; and 
even with the opinion of the Solicitor (then a private paper) be- 
fore them, and afterward the report of their own commissioners 
before them, they could not have ordered the assessment to be 
waived, and a suit to be brought fairly to try the question, with- 
out subjecting themselves to a deluge of imputation. 

At last the case has reached a court of justice, where both 
sides can be heard, and where the hot breath of passion and 
faction does not mildew reason. The plaintiff has had a full 
hearing, so has the defendant. The directors of the plaintiff, in 
contesting the large sum at stake, have acted only as trustees for 
all the men and all the women and all the children who make up 
the stockholders, and whose gain or loss the result must be. 

Whether trustees should have relinquished this money without 
an effort to recover it, or whether they have acted wisely and 
properly in striving to save it, I am content to leave to the judg- 
ment of any man or any woman who has intelligently listened to 
this trial. 

One other remark, and I have done. Long ago the late Mr. 
Justice Nelson, then being on the bench, and likely there to re- 
main for some time, and Judge Hall, the predecessor of your 
Honor, being also on the bench, with a prospect of years before 
him, one who now is also in his grave — I refer to Mr. Horace F. 
Clark — came from the officers of the plaintiff to retain me as 
counsel in this cause. I should be more literal in saying that Mr. 
Clark came to retain me in such proceedings before the courts as 
might grow out of the claim for the tax involved in this cause. 
At that time this action had not been commenced. 

When this application was made, I did not know but that some 
phase or branch of the controversy might still come before one 
of the departments of the Government, and I thought it proper 
to decline all connection with it. There was of course no legal 
objection to a Senator's acting as counsel in court in any case, 
provided his retainer was not from the Government; but I chose 
not to act as counsel in a case anything connected with which 
might be dependent before any one of the departments. I de- 
clined the retainer, and gave my reason to Mr. Clark, who deem- 
ed it rather fine-spun, and proposed to renew the subject after 



" THE MEANS WHEREBY I LIVE." 48 1 

everything had passed away except a stand-up contest before the 
judicial tribunals. Months rolled round, and the time came when 
all connection between the case and any executive department at 
Washington was entirely and finally ended, and the whole matter 
was transferred to the courts of law. I was then again applied to; 
and learning that everything pertaining to the controversy was 
thereafter to be confined to the judicial arena, I accepted a re- 
tainer, and, owing to considerations of more recent origin, I have 
derived much satisfaction from the fact. At first I saw in the 
employment only the labor, and the wages of the laborer, and I 
shrank from the toil, knowing it would be great, and would be re- 
quired at weary and inconvenient times. My associate will re- 
member the laggard steps with which I came into the case, and 
he will remember also that the flattering wish he expressed, and 
my willingness always to be associated with him, turned the scale 
with me, when illness and other occupations mad& me hesitate. 

The practice of law is my profession, and "the means where- 
by I live." Never so much as since I have been in public life 
has it been necessary to pursue my profession for my own main- 
tenance, and for that of those dependent on me; it is an absolute 
necessity, and one which will be, as it has been, steadfastly obey- 
ed always, when it does not consume the time due to public la- 
bors. All this is of no interest to your Honor, or to any one but 
myself, and yet I feel warranted in alluding to it for reasons 
which will appear in a moment. 

It should here be stated that this action was commenced by 
us in the courts of the State of New York; there we meant to 
keep it; there we meant to try it. But the defendant, in spite of 
our wish, removed it into the courts of the U ted States and 
brought it here. 

Moved by the hope of partisan advantage, ©r by some kin- 
dred motive, it has pleased persons connected with public prints to 
arraign the propriety of my acting as counsel in the case, and 
acting, as they say, against the Government; as if there was any- 
thing in law or morals or reason forbidding any lawyer from 
acting professionally against the Government before a court of 
justice. There has been much of this censorship. Indeed, I 
have been assured by ear-witnesses that it was announced in the 
31 



482 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

streets months ago that I was to be driven from the case by per- 
sistent printed calumny. 

The effort has been somewhat persistent; it has been carried 
so far, I regret to say, as to reach attempts to bespatter more 
than one of the judges before whom the case had come to be tri- 
able. Such assaults upon courts are certain, even yet, to recoil 
on their authors, without other injury except to the cause of de- 
cency. As attempts, by intimidation, to impede or influence the 
course of justice, they deserve to be rebuked; as ebullitions of 
spite, and as abuses of the freedom of the press, they ought, per- 
haps, to be overlooked among the petty bri. '':es of progress. 

I allude to the subject to bring it to the notice of your Honor, 
and to say that the impudence of these libelers has given to my 
espousal of this case a warmth which, but for their attacks, it 
would never have had; and to say further that, after my right to 
act as counsel had been thus called in question, I would have 
tried this cause had no fee or reward attended it beyond the con- 
sciousness and the satisfaction which every lawyer must feel when 
he proves that he has the courage and the virtue to maintain the 
rights of his client and himself against popular clamor, and de- 
spite the pens of libelers, whether they write from malice, or only 
for a railroad pass, or for hush-money, or blackmail. 

In England a barrister, offered a retainer, who should refuse 
it or throw up the case for fear that obloquy might fall on him 
for doing his duty, would forfeit his prestige and standing as a 
member of the bar. If the retainer were against the Crown, and 
he should falter, he would be held in meaner estimation than if 
he refused to appear against the humblest peasant in all the 
realm. The memorable language of Lord Brougham, on the trial 
of Queen Caroline, was only a passionate outpouring of this 
chivalric sentiment. 

In this country the morale of the profession, in this respect, 
has not yet reached the standard which has long been maintained 
in Westminster Hall; but I would hold myself unworthy a place 
on the rolls if, being asked to argue a case involving a great sum 
of money, the reputations of many and the interests of many 
more, and involving also grave questions of law, I should shrink 
from standing at the bar of the country and vindicating, as best 



CLOSE OF THE CASE. 483 

I could, the Constitution, the law and the right, even for an un- 
popular or hated client, because political opponents or slanderers 
might defame me for doing it. I give my gage that if the time 
shall ever come, politics or no politics, when I am afraid to brave 
such dangers — afraid to hew to the line of professional integrity 
and fidelity, let the chips fly where they may — I will confess my- 
self unworthy to stand before a court, unworthy membership of 
the bar, unworthy the association of men who place truth and 
honor above the passionate discords, the groveling resentments,' 
or the acclamations of the hour. 

On the first of July the court directed the jury 
to render a verdict of $594,002.89 in favor of the 
Company, to which the counsel for the defendant 
(the United States Attorney) then and there ex- 
cepted. An appeal to the Supreme Court was 
soon taken, and the cause was argued at the Octo- 
ber term. In rendering a decision, Mr. Justice 
Clifford wrote the opinion of the court to this 
effect : " Judgment reversed with costs, and the 
cause remanded, with directions to issue a new 
venire." Senator Conkling did not again appear 
in the case. 

The Republican State Convention met at Utica 
September 23, 1874. In response to a resolution 
of the Convention, Senator Conkling made an ad- 
dress, from wdiich we give the following extract. 
It is believed to be his only published utterance 
on the temperance question : 

A somewhat active life, much of it passed in practicing law 
and attending courts, has made me a sorrowful witness of the 



484 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

crime and misery caused by excess in intoxicating drinks. I 
know too well that intemperance fills the poor-houses and prisons 
and feeds the gibbets. Every rational effort to shut the door 
which leads to such destruction has my sympathy and respect. 
But an irrational effort, an effort worse than vain, an effort which 
must not only defeat itself, but defeat its object, never can be 
defended in any case. Governor Dix did not go as far as some 
of the advocates of total abstinence would have him go. This is 
the argument. Granted ; and what does it prove ? If it were 
possible now to elect a Governor who would go further, well might 
the friends of prohibition prefer him. But no such case exists. 
Governor^ Dix is to be chosen, or an administration is to come in 
with which free traffic in spirituous liquors and free drinking of 
ardent spirits will be a cardinal principle and a prime necessity. 
No man is so ignorant as not to know this, and the whole ques- 
tion is whether the friends of temperance shall make sure of a 
part or throw away the whole. Half a loaf is better than no 
bread, and a greater scandal could not fall on the cause of tem- 
perance than for its apostles to stab it by helping to open the 
dram-shops throughout the State, not for the sale of light beer, 
but of poisonous and maddening adulterations palmed off as 
spirits. A fanatical, unreasonable and dogmatic disposition has 
long been one of the specious charges against the advocates of 
temperance, and every thoughtful friend of temperance has rea- 
son to take heed now lest he become an engineer " hoist with his 
own petard." Zeal without wisdom is like faith without works. 
Party platforms, candidates and governments are never exact 
representatives of individual opinion. They but embody the aver- 
age sentiment and judgment of associated hearts and minds. Flaws 
can be found in men and in all their works ; and he is wisest who 
builds while the day lasts and with the materials he has. 

At this Convention the Hon. John A. Dix was 
renominated for Governor, and the Hon. John C. 
Robinson for Lieutenant-Governor. 

No space remains for any of Senator ConkHng's 
speeches during this campaign. He deHvered a 



A MEMORABLE ELECTION. 485 

long address in Brooklyn, October 30, 1874. It 
contained his rebuke to the spirit of calumny 
which assails the character of public men. It is 
probable that many high-minded and able men 
shrink from public life owing to the constant 
abuse and wilful misrepresentation to which the 
leaders of political parties are subjected. 

Few heed the command of God: "Thou shall 
not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." 

No prominent man has, during the last twenty 
years, suffered more than Roscoe Conkling by 
the unjust and often cowardly attacks of his ene- 
mies. Now that he has passed away without a 
stain upon either his public or professional char- 
acter we may read with interest his views upon 
public slanderers. (See extract of this speech on 
page 389.) 

A political revolution occurred November 2, 
and not only were the Republican candidates de- 
feated in New York, but a Republican majority of 
almost a hundred in the House of Representatives 
was changed to a Democratic majority of seventy 
members. The record of the Republicans in the 
recent session of Congress was such that their 
party had, to some extent, lost public confidence. 
Moreover, disaffected Republican Senators had 
joined hands with Democrats in the House of 
Representatives to overthrow the work of Recon- 



486 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

struction. In the State of New York Senator 
Conkling could not be held responsible for the 
Democratic victory. 

Governor Dix was opposed to prohibition; and 
the liquor question being prominent in 1874, the 
third party polled a large Republican vote. Fur- 
thermore, the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. 
Tilden, was a very sagacious politician, and by a 
clever device he obtained many votes. He caused 
to be made a facsimile of one of his letters and 
addressed copies of this to Democrats in every 
school district of the State, asking them to work 
for the ticket. Each man supposed he had re- 
ceived an autograph letter, and felt flattered ac- 
cordingly. Mr. Samuel J. Tilden's plurality over 
John A. Dix was over 50,000. 



1875- 
CHAPTER XXV. 

SENATOR CONKLING AND GENERAL SHERIDAN A FA- 
MOUS PATENT SUIT. 

/^NE of Mr. Conkling's ablest speeches was in 
defence of General Sheridan, in January, 1875, 
Several disaffected Republicans in the Senate had 
united with the Democrats in assailing the Ad- 
ministration. In the city of New York a call for 
an indignation meeting was signed by Democrats 
and alleged Republicans. A mass meeting was 
held at Cooper Institute, and General Sheridan 
denounced upon the strength of a telegram from 
McEnery, the Democratic gubernatorial claimant 
in Louisiana. Among others, William M. Evarts 
spoke. 

Ilnsurgents in Louisiana had forcibly seized the 
General Assembly of that State and placed its 
organization in the hands of the minority. With 
the aid of General Sheridan's forces these inter- 
lopers were expelled from the legislative chamber 
by means of the civil authority of the State. 

This act was denounced as a usurpation, not 

487 



488 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING.' 

only in Congress, but also at indignation meetings 
in New York and Boston ; and the responsibility 
was laid on Grant's administration. It may be 
said that in the debate upon the Louisiana ques- 
tion Senator Conkling defended the Administra- 
tion as successfully as on several previous occa- 
sions, and notably in the winter of 1871-72.'"' 

Senator Conkling reviewed the facts in the Louis- 
iana matter January 28 and 29, and proved that 
the military only supported the civil power. This 
speech forms a chapter of recent history that should 
be read by every American student. Referring 
to this remarkable oration, the writer of an obituary 
in the Daily Tribune, of Salt Lake City, says : 

* * * In the field of his triumphs there were three occasions 
when, it seems to us, his superiority over his fellow-men shone 
out most conspicuously. The one was after General Sheridan 
had sent up his despatch from New Orleans saying that the bogus 
Legislature convened there were banditti, and asking for orders 
to establish order. Congress for days rang with anathemas 
against the soldier, and the Administration behind him. The 
ablest speakers of the opposition, one after another, vented their 
fury, and in more than one State Legislature resolutions were 
carried, in excitement and anger, condemning the General and the 
party in power, while the press of the opposition poured out its 
venom in a Niagara flood. At last Roscoe Conkling got the 
floor of the Senate and talked for three hours. There was never 
after that a speech on the other side, never another hostile reso- 

* He was a constant visitor at the White House, and after a Cabinet 
meeting a messenger would often go to his apartments with the message, 
" The President's compliments to Senator Conkling, and he would like to 
see him at the White House this evening." 



LETTER FROM SENA TOR HO WE. 489 

lution, and the fury of the press changed to simply a sullen whine. 
In our judgment, there never was a speech delivered by any other 
man that produced an effect so convincing, all-embracmg and 
profound. It was a command of - About face!" to the nation. 

The speech upon " The Nation and Louisiana " 
would fill sixty pages of this volume. The author 
prefers to omit entirely rather than mutilate it. 

The following letter from the Hon. Timothy O. 
Howe, a Senator from Wisconsin, explains itself. 

Washington, January 29, 1875. 
Dear Mrs. ConkUng: I think you will be glad to hear and it 
gives me great satisfaction to declare, that Mr. Conkling has just 
concluded a speech which in my judgment has not its equal in 

the annals of the Senate. . , • , , ^^ 

There are those so loyal to the traditions of this body as not 
to concede that this speech is equal to our great model, Mr. 
Webster's reply to Hayne, but I cannot admit the exception 
You may be verv sure I do not claim an acquaintance with you 
which would authorize me to offer you any words of mere courtesy; 
but I am sure you would permit a stranger to declare to you so 
interesting a truth as I have stated above. 

Believe me, very sincerely yours, 

T. O. Howe. 
Mrs. RoscoE Conkling. 

The following letter explains itself. 

Utica, N. Y., May 22, 1875. 
The Honorable DanieV Pratt, Frank Hiscock and others, 

''-'"r™":-! am honored by your invitation to attend a 
banquet, to be given_or^tl^^ 

— T^:^;r;^two occasions referred to in the first line of this ardcle 
are the Chicago Convention of 1 8 80 and the autumnal campaign of that 



year. 



490 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the Honorable Charles B. Sedgwick, on occasion of his retire- 
ment from our profession. 

It would give me great pleasure to participate in the honors 
and regrets to be awarded in parting with one who has borne so 
distinguished a part in the toil and success of life. Few men 
have won more conspicuous triumphs, or earned more enviable 
reputation for eloquence, scholarship and ability at the bar, and, 
at the same time, in the general field of intellectual effort. His 
withdrawal from the profession from which so many able men in 
this region have already gone, will be widely and seriously felt, 
and must be the occasion of regret to bench, bar and suitors. 
And yet we cannot wonder at it. Long and arduous service has 
brought an inclination to rest, and also the right to rest, and his 
voluntary relinquishment of opportunities any lawyer might 
covet is of itself evidence of his wisdom and superiority. Many 
men show that they know how to begin and continue active exer- 
tion; few men have the art and sagacity seasonably and gracefully 
to retreat from the din of life, and betake themselves to the leis- 
ure and reflection of broader and more serene existence. 

I need not assure you that my kindest wishes will go with Mr. 
Sedgwick and his family on the voyage they contemplate and 
abide with them in every land. 

At the time chosen for the banquet, it is probable I shall be 
constrained to be elsewhere, and therefore I am compelled to 
deny myself the privilege of meeting my eminent brethren. 
Cordially, your obedient servant, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 



In the summer of 1875 M^- Conkling made his 
first trip to Europe. It was a short tour, and most 
of his time was spent in England. Upon his re- 
turn to New York he was encountered by reporters, 
who, as has been too often the practice, represented 
him as saying many things that he never said. 
The Enghsh press, taking these extracts as facts, 



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THE REMINGTON RIFLE. 49 1 

reviewed them and criticised them as his pub- 
Hshed opinions. The next evening he was given a 
serenade at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and he spoke 
from the balcony to a large assemblage. 

The first important patent suit which Senator 
Conkling argued in court was concerning the cele- 
brated Remington rifle. Mrs. Elizabeth S. Roberts, 
the administratrix of General B. S. Roberts, de- 
ceased, through her counsel, Edward N. Dicker- 
son, moved in August, 1875, for a preliminary in- 
junction in the United States Circuit Court for the 
Southern District of New York. The motion was 
to prevent the firm of E. Remington & Sons from 
manufacturing their breech-loading rifle. Messrs. 
Georpfe Gifford and B. F. Thurston were associated 
with Senator Conkling as counsel for the defend- 
ants. The facts of the case may be thus briefly 
stated : 

In 1859 General Roberts claimed to have Invented a tapering 
chamber for a breech-loading gun-barrel. He had this invention 
embodied in a gun which was made for him at the works of the 
Remingtons, in Ilion ; and this gun was deposited in the Patent 
Office as the model upon which his patent was issued. General 
Roberts took service in the army for the Union and, during the 
war, did nothing with this invention. The Remingtons, who 
claimed to have made some sort of a contract with General Rob- 
erts about this invention, on their part also remained passive. 
After the war was over, the Remingtons began to make guns with a 
tapering chamber. General Roberts asked them to pay him a 
royalty upon such guns. The Remingtons, it appears, did not at 
that time deny infringement, but stated that the invention was 



492 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

not a new one ; upon which General Roberts wrote the Reming- 
tons that he should sue them for infringement. Instead of suing 
them, however, he sued Schuyler, Hartley & Graham, assuming 
that this firm were the agents of the Remingtons. That suit 
was decided in favor of the plaintiff, and an injunction was 
issued against Schuyler, Hartley & Graham. Then a new suit 
was brought against the Remingtons, and a motion for a pre- 
liminary injunction was made in that suit. The complainant 
(Roberts) claimed that the Remingtons were privy to and bound 
by the suit against Schuyler, Hartley & Graham. The Reming- 
tons pleaded that they were not bound by the former suit ; that 
Schuyler, Hartley & Graham were not their agents, and that they 
(the Remingtons) were neither the real nor the nominal parties to 
the former suit. The Remingtons, moreover, as a separate de- 
fence, claimed, as they always have, that the Roberts invention 
was not a new one, and particularly that it was contained in a gun 
made by one Joslyn. The Remingtons also claimed: that their 
gun did not infringe the Roberts patent ; that infringement was 
not only not denied in the Schuyler, Hartley & Graham suit, but 
that the counsel for Schuyler, Hartley & Graham unnecessarily 
admitted infringement, so that that question had not been dis- 
cussed. The questions, therefore, were the following : 

1. Were the Remingtons bound as privies by the decree in the 
case against Schuyler, Hartley & Graham ? 

2. Did the Remington gun infringe the Roberts patent ? 

3. Was the Roberts patent anticipated in law by the Joslyn gun? 

Senator Conkling won the case, the motion for 
injunction being denied by Blatchford, J. His 
argument in this case was printed in pamphlet 
form; and it is one of his few arguments in patent 
causes that are preserved. He had then been for 
ten years out of active practice of law. William 
C. Witter, of New York, who was then in the office 
of George Gifford (one of the counsel for the de- 



WINS THE CASE. 493 

fendant), on being asked by the biographer to 
make a digest of Mr. ConkUng's argument, wrote 
the following in reply : "The whole argument is 
too good to be abbreviated for any purpose. I 
think it is a remarkable instance of a man by orig- 
inal capacity stepping right into a new line of con- 
troversy, mastering the subject, and making as 
complete, comprehensive and sound an argument 
as if it had been his life-business to argue patent 
causes." 

Senator Conkling afterward addressed mass 
meetings at New York, Buffalo and Utica ; and 
reports of his speeches were telegraphed to all 
parts of the State. 

The election occurred November 2. The Demo- 
crats were successful, although the (Governor Til- 
den's) majority of 50,000 in the preceding year was 
reduced to 12,000. The bad weather in the coun- 
try districts prevented the casting of a full vote, 
but the Republicans carried both houses of the 
Legislature. 

In the autumn of 1875 many Republican jour- 
nals, throughout the State of New York, named 
Senator ConkUng as a candidate for the Presidency. 
His nomination and defeat at the Cincinnati Con- 
vention of 1876 will be described in the next 
chapter. 



1876. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE STATE CONVENTION AT SYRACUSE THE CINCIN- 
NATI CONVENTION THE HAYES-TILDEN CAMPAIGN 

LIFE IN WASHINGTON. 

' I ^HE first session of the Forty-fourth Congress 
was the longest which had been held in the 
history of the Government. For the first time 
since the war the House of Representatives had 
a Democratic majority. In their endeavors to 
make a record for economy, Democrats reduced 
the estimates of the heads of the several depart- 
ments, and delayed the appropriation bills so that 
Congress did not adjourn till August 15. 

Senator Conkling was regarded as the man 
who should succeed to General Grant. At this 
period, however, the Democratic House of Repre- 
sentatives impeached a member of the Cabinet. 
Mr. Conkling quickly foresaw the influence of 
this action upon his political prospects, and signi- 
fied his wish not to be a candidate at the ap- 
proaching Republican National Convention. He 
yielded, however, to the importunate solicitations 



DR. WATSON'S ADDRESS. 495 

of his personal friends. Almost immediately the 
press of the whole country began to discuss his 
nomination as a Presidential candidate. The 
newspaper cuttings upon this subject fill two 
large scrap-books. 

At the first public rpeeting of the Utica Conk- 
ling Club, March 2, 1876, Dr. WiUiam H. Watson 
m.ade the following brief but just remarks on the 
character and public career of Roscoe Conklmg. 

DR. WATSON's address. 
Mr. President atid Gentlemen of the Utica Conkli7ig Club: The 
notice of this meeting is addressed to " those who are in favor of 
the nomination and election of Roscoe Conkling to the high office 
of President of the United States." I am proud, sir, to be per- 
mitted to be enrolled among that number. I have watched his 
career with admiration for upward of twenty years, and there are 
those within the sound of my voice who have enjoyed a still ear- 
lier acquaintance with him than myself. They have seen him 
coming to this city at the early age of seventeen, a stnplmg m 
years, but even then a man in intellect, to commence the study 
of the law in the office of that then famous advocate, whose peer- 
less reputation is still fresh and green in the memory of most of 
us— Joshua A. Spencer. * * * We have seen him in the memor- 
able campaign of 1872, contesting every inch of ground from Lake 
Erie to Montauk Point, and finally leading the Republican party 
to overwhelming victory. We have seen him declining to wear 
the judicial ermine as Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of 
the United States, refusing the proffered position of Minister 
to the Court of England, and the high office of Secretary of State, 
that he might continue to fight the battles of the Republican 
party. We behold him now, sir, in the full maturity and the 
plenitude of his powers, with a most commanding presence and 
a robust physique, fortified and preserved by a life of temperance, 
possessing the eloquence of a Choate, combined with the personal 



496 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

magnetism of Henry Clay and the massive strength and skilled 
logic of Daniel Webster, standing in the forefront of the Senate 
Chamber of the United States, the acknowledged leader of a great 
party, its most sturdy champion and its ablest and most uncom- 
promising defender. * * * 

The battle-field of the approaching contest will be the Empire 
State, and the electoral vote will be of paramount importance in 
the campaign. With Roscoe Conkling as our standard-bearer, 
the vote of New York cannot fail to be given to the Republican 
party. 

We have a right to consider him as in the hands of his friends; 
and as such we should see to it that a delegation is sent to the Na- 
tional Convention from this State fully instructed to sustain him 
against any and all rivals. 

During this session Mr. Conkling was promi- 
nent in the debates. He was opposed to all legis- 
lation for increasing the coinage of silver, and 
was very active against the Bland silver act. He 
introduced a trade-mark bill, which became a law. 
It provided that the owner of a trade-mark, if he 
made affidavit that any other person was fraud- 
ulently using labels or devices containing copies 
of his trade-mark, could procure the arrest and in- 
dictment of the accused person; and the guilty 
person was made liable to imprisonment for a 
term not exceeding five years. Mr. Conkling also 
favored the measure to conduct the geographical 
surveys west of the one hundredth meridian. 

In answer to the attack made by the New York 
Mercury oi March 12, 1876, upon Senators Conk- 
ling and Logan, the former said : 



DENOUNCES DEFAMERS. 497 

These institutions of ours were builded only recently. Their 
foundations were laid not in the gray twilight of an early age, but 
when the beams of many centuries lighted the builders; the archi- 
tects were picked men from different nationalities, and they pro- 
foundly studied governments in all their known forms; the thea- 
tre whereon the experiment has been working is favored above all 
other lands. If such a government, blest in opportunity, the one 
considerable experiment of free government extant on the globe 
has, indeed, at the end of a century culminated in a saturnalia of 
fraud, in a carnival of venality and un worthiness; it is time to ask 
who shall come next in the march of nations to dispute the divin- 
ity of kings ? Which nation shall brave the danger of rearing a 
government of the people, by the people and for the people, if in 
truth it be that in the last half of the nineteenth century the 
only such government on earth is honeycombed with venality, 
fraud, betrayal, bribery, infamy ? Truth and patriotism rise up 
against such monstrous misrepresentations, and truth and patriot- 
ism will prevail against them. 

No, sir. Individuals may flinch under these inflictions, but I 
console myself in the belief, of which I see many signs, that the 
discerning judgment which resides in great masses of men will 
winnow the wheat from the chaff, and the chaff from the wheat, 
and distinguish between those who fall, or have fallen, before 
temptation, and those who, making no parade of public or 
private virtue, but walking by the lights and the modicum of in- 
tegrity vouchsafed to common mortals, strive in heart and con- 
science to do the duties set before them. My belief is that it 
grows surer and safer than it was not long ago, for every man to 
trust his reputation to the general discernment, the conscience 
and intelligence, of his countrymen. 

Senator Conkling was now the undisputed leader 

and champion of the Republicans of the Empire 

State. He had won distinction for his support of 

the Administration. When, therefore, the State 

Convention was held at Syracuse, March 22, 1876, 
32 



498 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

to appoint delegates to the National Convention, 
the platform, after approving of the acts of the 
President, nominated Roscoe Conkling as the 
choice of the Republicans of New York. 
The following are the last three resolutions. 

4. — We emphatically condemn the dishonesty and treachery of 
every official who is faithless to his trust, and approve the injunc- 
tion to let no guilty man, however high, escape. We believe the 
virtue of the people, which saved the nation through the storm of 
war, will preserve it from the dangers of corruption. We com- 
mend the good work of the National Administration in protecting 
the public treasury and punishing public offenders; and in lay- 
ing down his trust at the close of the period for which he had been 
chosen, President Grant will carry with him the lasting gratitude of 
the American people for his patriotic services in war and in peace. 

5. — As a statesman and patriot of the highest ability and char- 
acter, whose long and distinguished public career is without re- 
proach, who has faithfully served the cause of freedom and the 
Union through the great struggle of the past fifteen years, who 
has been steadfast to equal rights and financial honesty, and the 
unflinching exponent of Republican principles, and who possesses 
the experience, capacity, courage and firmness which qualify him 
to give strength and honor to the Government, we present Roscoe 
Conkling to the National Republican Convention as our choice for 
the nomination for President. 

6. — As the delegated representatives of the half-million Re- 
publican voters of New York, we send cordial greeting to our 
patriotic brethren throughout the land, and, equally earnest with 
them for the success of our common cause, and pledging our- 
selves to faithful support of the Cincinnati nominations, we give 
especial assurance that the nomination of our candidate 7vill secure, 
beyond question, the thirty-five electoral votes of New York for the 
Republican ticket. 

An amendment declaring " that the nomination 
should be the result of the untrammeled- delib- 



THE CONVENTION MEETS. 499 

eration of the National Convention," was offered 
and lost by a vote of 113 yeas to 250 nays. A 
slight trace of this opposition appeared afterward 
at the Cincinnati Convention. 

During the month of March Senator Conkling 
advised that, in the event of his failure to receive 
the nomination, the votes of the New York dele- 
gation should be given to Rutherford B. Hayes, 
of Ohio. 

Mr. Conkling was the only Republican Senator 
from the Empire State, and he was destined to 
share the fate of New York politicians, excepting 
Martin Van Buren, from the beginning of the 
republic. It seemed to have been " written in the 
stars." Perhaps among our sister States jealousy 
of the great Commonwealth forbade the honor of 
this nomination to be given to a citizen of New 
York. 

The Republican National Convention met at Cin- 
cinnati on the fourteenth of June. New York was 
represented by seventy delegates, and an equal 
number of alternates. The delegation stayed at 
the Grand Hotel, and displayedjn the street a ban- 
ner bearing this inscription: '' Roscoe Conkling's 
Nomination assures the Thirty -five Electoral 
Votes of New York." It was more imposing 
than the banners of the delegates from any other 
State. 



500 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

The Delegates and Alternates at Large were : 

Alonzo B. Cornell, New York. Edwin A. Merritt, Potsdam. 
Henry Highland Garnett, Ithaca. 

Theodore M. Pomeroy, Auburn. George B. Sloan, Oswego. 

James M. Matthews, Buffalo. Albert C. Judson, Albany. 

Among the other delegates were : 

I.. Bradford Prince. Edwin D. Morgan. 

Abiel A. Low. Marshall O. Roberts. 

Stewart L. Woodford. George Opdyke. 

Benjamin D. Silliman. Nathan D. Wendell. 

James Otis. Edward M. Madden. 

William Orton. Stephen Sanford. 

Benjamin K. Phelps. Charles M. Dennison. 

John D. Lawson. John C. Churchill. 

Clarence A. Seward. George N. Crouse. 

Rufus B. Cowing. Frank Hiscock. 

Isaac H. Bailey. Edmund L. Pitts. 

Salem H. Wales. Thomas C. Piatt. 

Leslie W. Russell. Philip Becker. 

Isaac Dayton. Sherman S. Rogers. 
Pierre C. Van Wyck. 

The Convention was called to order by ex-Gov- 
ernor Edwin D. Morgan, of New York, chairman 
of the Republican National Committee. After 
delivering the opening address, Mr. Morgan nom- 
inated the Hon. Theodore M. Pomeroy, of New 
York, to be the temporary presiding officer. The 
latter gentleman spoke at some length, and re- 
viewed the history of the party. 

When the roll of members of the Convention 
had been called, the secretary read the names of 
the persons composing the different Committees. 



GOVERNOR WOODFORD'S SPEECH. 5OI 

The New York members of the four Committees 
were as follows: 

On Credentials, Thomas C. Piatt; on Rules and 
Order of Business, Walter L. Sessions; on Resolu- 
tions, Charles E. Smith; and on Permanent Organ- 
ization, William Orton. 

When the last-named Committee reported, the 
Hon. Edward McPherson, of Pennsylvania, was 
chosen as President, the Hon. Marshall O. Roberts 
was named as the Vice-President, and the Hon. 
James W. Husted was selected as the Secretary 
from the State of New York. On the second day 
the platform was adopted, after which ex-Lieuten- 
ant-Governor Stewart L. Woodford presented the 
name of Roscoe Conkling. He said : 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention : 

In obedience to the injunction of our State Convention, with 
the thoughtful and absolute endorsement of our deliberate reflec- 
tion and conviction, and with the earnest enthusiasm that his 
fidelity in friendship, his private worth and his public services de- 
mand, New York presents for the Presidency of the republic the 
honored name of Roscoe Conkling. Broad in culture, eloquent 
in debate, wise in council, fearless in leadership, and as true to 
the old Republican party as the needle to the pole— Roscoe Conk- 
ling needs no defence or eulogy. He is a positive quantity in 
our politics. He, through the dark and trying hours when slander 
and misrepresentation hissed at the silent and brave man whom 
we have twice placed in the Presidential chair, was the faithful 
and true friend of Ulysses S. Grant. In presenting his name New 
York fully recognizes and cordially honors all the names that 
have been presented upon this platform to-day. When Connecti- 
cut suggested the candidacy of Marshall Jewell, we recalled the 



502 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 



energy, economy and executive ability that have marked and 
adorned his admirable admini.'-tration of postal affairs. When 
Indiana presented the name of her great War Governor, our hearts 
went back to that dark hour when organized rebellion seized on 
the Legislature of Indiana, and when Oliver P. Morton strangled 
that treason and won as great a victory in the council as our best 
and bravest soldier won in the field. 

When Kentucky — birthplace of Abraham Lincoln — Kentucky, 
where sleep the ashes of Harry Clay — when Kentucky named the 
great Secretary, she sought to name one to whom New York 
gives her heartiest love and highest honor. You and I remember 
how all the animosities of partisanship died when we learned that 
the great commoner of Maine was stricken, and the awful silence 
which fell upon us as we feared approaching death had settled 
over him. From every heart there rose most earnest prayers — 
from opponent as well as supporter, when faithful friends and lov- 
ing wife were waiting by his side — that the God of all life would 
spare James G. Blaine ; and to-day, with the most loving of his 
friends, New York congratulates him that his strength is renewed 
and his health so fully restored. 

But, gentlemen, let us not nominate with our hearts, but with 
our heads. Four years ago we gave to General Grant, and that 
grand old patriot, John A. Dix, 50,000 majority in the State of 
New York. Two years ago that same State gave 53,000 majority 
to Samuel J. Tilden. Only this last spring the State of Connecti- 
cut, right on the eve of the Presidential battle, gave 5,000 Demo- 
cratic majority. Only the other day, as we were gathering for 
this Convention, the wires whispered across the continent that Ore- 
gon had gone Democratic. To-day, Indiana has a Democratic 
Governor ; to-day, New Jersey has a Democratic Governor ; to- 
day, Connecticut has a Democratic Governor ; to-day, New York 
has a Democratic Governor ; and unless you can secure the votes 
of Indiana, Ohio, Connecticut and New York, or, failing one, the 
votes of all the rest, in spite of all our enthusiasm, in spite of all 
our zeal, we may follow the banner of our party to defeat. I do 
not claim that Roscoe Conkling is the only Republican who can 
carry the State of New York. I believe that he can. If I did 
not so believe, I would cut this hand off before I would stand in a 



MR. CONKLING NOMINATED. 



503 



Republican convention and plead fox' his nomination. Mark this, 
and it is in all soberness of judgment, there is in New York a vote 
that is neither Republican nor yet Democratic ; a vote that went 
for Dix in 1872 ; a vote that went for Tilden in 1874. 

Gentlemen of the Convention, I pray you, this hour, let all per- 
sonal ambition, let all pride, be put aside. Remember what Demo- 
cratic victory means. It means destruction of the national credit. 
It means madness in all legislation touching finances and the 
tariff. It means that all through the South-land white Republi- 
cans must put padlocks on their lips, Avhile black Republicans will 
be hunted like the sheep before the hounds. 

Gentlemen of the Convention, not for Roscoe Conkling, not 
for New York, but for the ideas of the Republican party; for the 
cause — for the cause that we followed, some of us, through fields 
of battle; in the name of those who died; in the name of the 
loyal men to whom we would give protection through all the land; 
in the name of all the interests of humanity that in this Centen- 
nial time are committed to the Republican party, I plead that you 
to-day give us a candidate with whom and under whom we can 
achieve, not personal ambition, but a victory that means honesty 
in finance, loyalty in government, and absolute protection to the 
lowliest and humblest under the flag of our fathers. 

The other candidates were, Marshall Jewell, 
of Connecticut, nominated by the Hon. S. W. Kel- 
logg ; Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, nominated 
by R. W. Thompson and seconded by the Hon. 
P. B. S. Pinchback; Benjamin H. Bristow, of Ken- 
tuck3^ nominated by John M. Harlan and second- 
ed by Luke P. Poland, George William Curtis and 
Richard H. Dana ; James G. Blaine, of Maine, 
nominated by Robert G. Ingersoll, and seconded 
by Henry M. Turner and William P. Frye ; Ruth- 
erford B. Hayes, of Ohio, nominated by Governor 



504 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Edward F. Noyes and seconded by Benjamin F. 
Wade, Augustus St. Gem and J. W. Davis ; John 
F. Hartranft, of Pennsylvania, nominated by Lin 
Bartholomew. 

The Convention then adjourned. 

On the morning of the third day the balloting 

for President began. The result of the first ballot 

was: 

Blaine, 285; Morton, 124; Bristow, 113; Conkling, 99; Hayes, 
61; Hartranft, 58; Jewell, ii; Wheeler, 3. 

All of the New York delegates, with the excep- 
tion of Mr. George William Curtis, voted for Ros- 
coe Conkling. The votes received by Mr. Conk- 
ling from other States were as follows: California, 
one; Florida, three; Georgia, eight; Iowa, Michi- 
gan, Mississippi, Missouri and Nevada, one each; 
North Carolina, seven; Texas and Virginia, three 
each. 

The second ballot resulted thus: 

Blaine, 296; Morton, 120; Bristow, 114; Conkling, 93; 
Hayes, 64; Hartranft, 63; Wheeler, 3; Washburne (E. B.), i. 

It will be seen that Mr. Conkling lost six votes, 
chiefly from Florida and North Carolina. There 
was no change in the New York delegation. A 
contest now arose over that famous fire-brand of 
Republican Conventions, the unit rule. After a 
long debate, during which the decision of the Chair 
was appealed from and sustained, the motion to 



BALLOTING. 



505 



count the States as " units " was defeated, and the 
Chair declared that " as the judgment of this Con- 
vention, it is the right of every individual member 
to vote accordinor to his individual sentiments." 

On the third ballot, the roll was called, with the 
following result: 

Blaine, 293; Bristow, 121; Morton, 113; Conkling, 90; Hart- 
ranft, 68; Hayes, 67; Wheeler, 2; Washburne, i. 

Here Mr. Conkling lost three votes, but there 
was no change in the New York delegation. 

The Convention then proceeded with the fourth 
ballot which resulted as follows: 

Blaine, 292; Bristow, 126; Morton, 108; Conkling, 84; Har- 
tranft, 71; Hayes, 68; Wheeler, 2; Washburne, 3. 

It will be noticed that Mr. Conkling lost six 
votes, all from Southern States. There was one 
bolter in the New York deleo-ation, Mr. A. A. 
Low, who voted for Mr. Bristow. 

No choice having been made, the secretary 
called the roll of States for the fifth time, with the 
following result: 

Blaine, 286; Bristow, 114; Hayes, 104; Morton, 95; Conk- 
ling, 82; Hartranft, 69; Wheeler, 2; Washburne, 3. 

On this ballot 755 votes were cast, one not vot- 
ing. Necessary to a choice, i^'^. Mr. Conkling 
had lost two votes from the Florida delegates. 
There was no change in the vote of New York. 



506 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

When Alabama was called on the sixth ballot, 
Mr. Madden, of New York, who had always been 
one of Mr. Conkling's warmest supporters, moved 
to take a recess to the end that the delegations 
could retire to consult. He was, however, ruled 
out of order on the ground that the roll-call had 
been commenced. 

The result of the sixth ballot was as follows: 

Blaine, 308; Hayes, 113; Bristow, iii; Morton, 85; ♦Conk- 
ling, 81; Hartranft, 50; Washburne, 4; Wheeler, 2. 

The voting of the New York delegates was the 
same as on the fourth and fifth ballots. 

Soon after the roll-call on the seventh and last 
ballot was begun, a member of the Indiana dele- 
gation set in motion the stampede to Governor 
Hayes. Of the thirty delegates; twenty-five voted 
for this candidate. Delegates from Kentucky, 
New York and Pennsylvania followed, and the 
result was announced as follows: 

Blaine, 351; Bristow, 21; Hayes, 384. 

* Concerning the reasons why Senator Conkling received so few votes 
outside of the New York delegation, it may be attributed to the fact that he 
was then comparatively unknown. He had never spoken in the Western 
States. In fact, there is up to that time ko record of any stump-speech of 
his beyond the limits of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Further- 
more, his opposition to the noted inflation measure of 1S74, and to the 
steamboat bill of 1873, created unfavorable feeling in the West against 
him. One of the delegates to the Convention has informed the author 
that had Senator Conkling made himself personally known to the masses 
outside his own State he could have received the nomination for President. 



MR. HAYES THE CANDIDATE. 507 

When New York was called, Theodore M. Pom- 
eroy ascended the platform and said: 

To indicate that the State of New York is in favor of unity 
and victory, she casts sixty- one votes for Rutherford B. Hayes, 
and nine for James G. Blaine. 

The gentlemen who voted for Mr. Blaine were 
William H. Robertson, James W. Husted, Jacob 
Worth, John H. Ketcham, Jacob W. Hoysradt, 
James M. Marvin, Stephen Sanford, Amos V. 
Smiley and James C. Feeter. 

The President then declared that Rutherford B. 
Hayes, having received the majority of all the 
votes, had been chosen as the candidate of the 
Convention. His nomination was at once made 
unanimous. The selection of a candidate for 
Vice-President was now in order. William A. 
Wheeler and Stewart L. Woodford, of New York, 
Marshall Jewell and Joseph R. Hawley, of Con- 
necticut, and Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, of New 
Jersey, were named few the position. When the 
State of New York was called by the secretary, 
Mr. Woodford withdrew, and before the call was 
completed William A. Wheeler was nominated by 
acclamation on the first ballot. The seventy dele- 
gates of New York supported Mr. Wheeler. Mem- 
bers of the Republican National Committee were 
then appointed, Alonzo B. Cornell being selected 



508 LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONK LING. 

for the Empire State. The Convention thereupon 
adjourned. 

Apropos of Mr. ConkHng's possible nomination, 
Samuel Wilkeson prepared, in the spring of 1876, 
a partial sketch of his life, which the biographer 
has used very advantageously. His letter explains 

itself: 

No. 23 Fifth Avenue, ) 
New York, June 20, 1876. j 

My Dear Conklmg: The future may call for a campaign life of 
you. At that uncertain date I may be an angel in heaven, clumsi- 
ly but devoutly thrumming a guitar, harp, or harpsichord. The 
manuscript I send you herewith may be useful as a plan of work. 

The difficulty your campaign biographer will have to encoun- 
ter is the enormousness of the material your life and labors have 
made for him. This will compel the use of your parliamentary 
and political speeches — m excerpts — strung on a string like gold 
beads. They cannot be handled in any other way. 

Your work at the bar should be treated after your Congres- 
sional and political work, but differently and fuller. 

Had not Pennsylvania been unmanageable, and the result been 
what I hoped for, I should have run up to Utica and talked with 
your wife, and there have rewritten the opening sketch wholly. 

Affectionately Yours, 

Saml. Wilkeson. 

P. S. — It is a pity that the Fates did not make me finish this 
work. S. W. 

Soon afterward Mr. Hayes wrote the following 
letter to Mr. Conkling: 

{Private.'] 

Columbus, O., 15th August, 1876. 
My Dear Sir: Our campaign in the States of Ohio and Indiana 
is now opened, and we are anxious to have you take part in it at 



LETTER FROM MR. HA YES. 5O9 

as early a day as you may be able to do so. New York can 
decide the election in our favor, if Indiana is carried against us 
in October. But to carry Indiana at the State election is, no 
doubt, a long step towards victory in New York. 

Besides, your speeches in the West will attract great attention. 
They will be published, and strengthen us in all parts of the 
United States. Your great speech in 1872* aroused and equipped 
our speakers, and furnished the press with arguments in every 
State. Your presence here will impart to our canvass life and 
enthusiasm, and insure that energetic effort which brings out a 
full vote and commands success. The more meetings you can 
address, the better, but if you speak only in two or three large 
cities in each of the States named, and at Chicago, and at Mil- 
waukee, I shall feel that you have placed the country and all of 
us under very great obligations. Sincerely your friend, 

R. B. Hayes. 

Hon. RoscoE Conkling. 

During the early part of September a Hayes and 
Wheeler banner was raised in Utica. At the close 
of the proceedings the assembled Republicans 
marched to the house of Mr. Conkling and tender- 
ed him a serenade. In response to the compliment 
he made the following address : 

Could I do so, fellow-citizens, I would take oy the hand every 
man in this concourse and thank him heartily for the kindness of 
this serenade. When I heard the approach of the band I said. 
This is not right. I ought rather to compliment you in this way. 
This serenade is more due from me to you than from you to me. 
But you have come to bid me welcome, after almost a year 
of absence, and I appreciate gratefully this visit. This is not 
the time and place for a partisan discourse. You do not expect 
or wish me to detain you upon such questions. I may say, how- 

* July 23, 1872, in behalf of Grant, at Cooper Institute, in the city of 
New York. 



5IO 



LIFE AND LE TIERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



ever, that the condition of the country is such as to demand 
the careful thought of every patriot. Business is suffering; in- 
dustry is depressed; labor does not receive adequate remunera- 
tion; the times are hard; in several of the States disorder and 
disquiet reign. In the presence of such facts it is the bounden 
duty of every man to labor earnestly for the truth, and so to vote 
and act as to advance what he believes to be right. As usual 
two great parties are arrayed against each other, asking the privi- 
lege of conducting the affairs of the nation. Of these two parties, 
I believe the better, the safer, to be the Republican party. [Ap- 
plause.] I have so believed since 1856, and, gentlemen, in the 
presence of my neighbors or elsewhere, now or at any other time, 
I have no apology to make, none whatever, because for twenty 
years I have belonged to the Republican organization, and have 
labored steadfastly for its principles and candidates. [Applause.] 
It seems, in some quarters, to be regarded as rather disreputable 
to belong to the Republican party and to have battled for its 
maintenance. We are told the Republican party is a machine. 
Yes. A government is a machine; a church is a machme; an 
army is a machine; an order of Masons is a machine; the com- 
mon-school system of the State of New York is a machine; a 
political party is a machine. 

Every organization which binds men together for a common 
purpose is a machine. • If its purposes are not honest, it should 
be hewn down and cast into the fire. But if its purposes are loyal 
and patriotic; if its aims are justice, civilization, progress, then 
it is a useful machine, and it ought to be preserved for the good 
that is in it. [Applause.] Therefore, I believe the Republican 
party to embody the better feelings of the community. Despite 
the knaves, hypocrites and pretenders, it is in the main right. I 
am willing and glad to confess, in the presence of all these wit- 
nesses, that, having belonged to it and believed in it through all 
these years, never have I been more of a Republican than to-night. 
[Applause.] In the canvass about to begin, I know you will do 
your duty. I will try to do mine. [Applause and cries of "Good!"] 
I hope that when the election is over we may meet to rejoice in 
the triumph of Republican principles and Republican candidates 
one and all. But, as I said before, I did not appear to make a 



WlfY ONE SPEECH ONL Y. 



511 



speech, but to thank you for this compliment. Returning again 
my thanks, and hoping that every good thing may be yours, I bid 
you again good-night. 

Senator Conkling then remarked to a friend 
that he would make four speeches in the campaign. 
The first of these was deUvered at Utica, October 
3, and was widely commented upon throughout 
the State. 

Owing to illness, he was unable to speak again. 
He spent seven weeks in a dark room, when he 
was unjustly accused of indifference to the result. 
He was too proud a man to make an explanation, 
and no friend of his, without his consent, ever 
dared explain anything for him. 

The following letter from his family physician 
describes the condition of his health. 

Utica, March 24, 1889. 
Hon. Alfred R. Conkling. 

Dear Sir : In reply to your favor of the 20th instant making 
inquiry in reference to the health of Mr, Conkling in the autumn 
of 1876, I would state that he was under my professional care 
during September, October and November of that year, and was 
suffering from malaria to such an extent that he was unable act- 
ively to engage in the political campaign. 

He made a short speech at his house in response to a serenade 
on September 6, and, against my most earnest remonstrance, in- 
sisted upon speaking at the Opera House in this city on the even- 
ing of October 3. At that time his eyes were excessively sensi- 
tive to light, and he was suffering from great prostration from the 
influence of the malarial infection. 

I accompanied him to the hall, and had the greatest misgivings 
in regard to his ability to finish his speech. He was obliged to 



5 I 2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

steady himself while speaking by resting his hand upon a table, 
and the footlights were turned down in order that they might not 
cause pain to his eyes. 

After that date, yielding most reluctantly to my advice, he did 
not again attempt to speak during that campaign 

Very sincerely yours, 

William H. Watson. 

A friend has lately told the biographer that dur- 
ing this illness of the Senator he himself suggested 
once that it might prove fatal. To this Mr. Conk- 
ling, setting his teeth, answered : " N-o — I am not 
going to die." 

At the election in November, Governor Tilden 
carried the State by about 33,000 majority. The 
Democratic candidates (Tilden and Hendricks) 
were also victorious in the States of Indiana, Con- 
necticut and New Jersey. 

Soon afterward Senator Conkling remarked to 
a relative that if he had made a trip through the 
State and set all his friends to work in the several 
counties New York might have been carried by 
the Republicans. We may here remind the reader 
that the Democratic plurality in the preceding 
year (1875) had been only 12,000. 

The unsatisfactory canvass of the vote of the 
States of Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida 
led Mr. Conkling to look up precedents in which 
the elections had been doubtful, or where the elec- 
tion had been made by the House of Representa- 



A TYPICAL OFFICE-SEEKER. 



513 



lives. The author, while examining the volumes 
of the Congressional Globe and Reco7'd in Senator 
Conkling's Hbrary, observed many pencil marks, 
showing that he had made a thorough study of the 
precedents in cases of disputed elections. The 
knowledge thus acquired was of much use to him 
in the preparation of his great speech upon the 
Electoral Commission, which will be discussed in 
our next chapter. 

While in Washington Senator Conkling was 
ceaselessly importuned by applicants for official 
appointment. A typical experience with one of 
these may now be described. In the winter of 
1876, the author, being in' Washington, called one 
evening upon Mr. Conkling at his lodgings, ad- 
joining Wormley's Hotel. Presently his colored 
man brought up a visitor's card. " William," said 
he, "what kind of looking man is this?" "Wall, 
sah, he's a kind er clean un," was the reply. 
"Then show him up," said the Senator. The gen- 
tleman entered with an arm full of letters of intro- 
duction and recommendation, several of which 
were signed by the " boys." First, explaining that 
his " business had all gone to pieces," the visitor 
next stated that he was an applicant for a position 
in the New York Custom-House. He fumbled 
with his pile of papers for a particular letter, and 

apologized to the Senator for keeping him in sust 
33 



SH 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE COiYKLING. 



pense. Mr. Conkling, controlling his naturally 
nervous spirit, betrayed no signs of impatience. 
Finding the desired document, the visitor hand- 
ed it to him. Mr. Conkling carefully read the 
paper and, returning it to his guest, said, in 
substance : 

" Colonel, you won't like to hear what I am about 
to tell you. A few years ago the New York Trib- 
tcne stated that the Custom-House at New York 
was my Custom-House. I then resolved to keep a 
list of the applicants for places in that institution. 
They numbered in a twelvemonth no less than 
475. My secretary grew weary of keeping tally 
and gave it up. I have long since made a resolu- 
tion to ask for no more appointments in the cus- 
toms service; and I know you would not request 
me to do what I have so often refused to do for 
others." 

In reply the visitor said, " Mr. Senator, you 
have no objection to my showing these letters to 
our Republican friends ? " 

" None at all, sir," answered Mr. Conkling, 
whereupon the " Colonel " rose, and Mr. Conk- 
ling bade him good-night. 

In Green's Short History of the English Peo- 
ple is a description of William Pitt. It might 
almost be applied to Senator Conkling. It is as 
follows : 



HIS IMPRESSIVE PERSONALITY. 515 

His noble figure, his flashing eye, his majestic voice, the fire 
and grandeur of his eloquence, gave him a sway over the House 
of Commons far greater than any other Minister has possessed. 
He could silence an opponent with a look of scorn, or hush the 
whole House with a single word. But he never stooped to the 
arts by which men form a political party. * * * 

Senator Conkling's impressive personality often- 
times afforded topics for the reporters. For many- 
years it seemed that whenever the correspondents 
of leading newspapers were without material 
for their regular letters they discussed Mr. Conk- 
ling. The biographer has frequently read minute 
descriptions of his dress, from the color of his 
necktie to the number of buttons upon his gaiters. 
His attitude and movements on the floor of the 
Senate were also delineated. Indeed, he general- 
1)^ attracted more attention from the occupants 
of the reporters' gallery than any other Senator. 

From the years 1871 to 1881, almost the first 
question asked by strangers entering the gallery 
of the Senate was, " Which is Conkling ?" and an 
announcement that this Senator was to address 
his associates in a set speech always attracted a 
large audience. 



January-August, 1877. 
y. CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE ELECTORAL COUNT SPEECH ON THE ELECTORAL 

COMMISSION SECOND TRIP TO EUROPE. 

nPHE noted Electoral Commission bill formed 
the chief topic for discussion in the second 
session of the Forty-fourth Congress. 

Mr. Conkling introduced, January 4, 1877, a 
petition of merchants and bankers, and spoke thus: 

I have been requested to present a petition, weighty by 
reason of the subject to which it relates, and by reason also of 
the number and character of those who sign it. The petitioners 
are citizens of New York, distinguished not only for their prom- 
inence as members of society, but for the large and varied interests 
they represent. They are men prominent in each of the great 
political parties of the country. 

I observe among the signatures names of eminent bankers, 
merchants, manufacturers, ship-owners, scholars, professional 
men, and other names long and honorably associated with leading 
enterprises and industries. It would be difficult to select in any 
State of the Union one hundred and fifty individuals and firms 
who represent a greater sum of property, intelligence and char- 
acter, or who, as petitioners, deserve more consideration. 

* -vf * * * * * 

The petition is brief, and I will read it: 

" To the Honorable the Senate and House of Repn^sentativcs of the United 

States of America, in Congress assembled: 

"Your memorialists, representing a large proportion of financial and 
commercial interests of the city of New York, beg leave most respectfully 
to express their great satisfaction at the action of your honorable bodies 

516 



A N- IMP OR TANT PE TITION. 5 I 7 

in appointing committees of conference to consider the proper mode of 
counting ballots for President and Vice-President of the United States. 

" They hail this action as an indication that the two Houses of Con- 
gress are desirous of settling this complicated question in a spirit of mod- 
eration and conciliation, and they beg leave to represent that, in acting 
thus, your honorable bodies have the cordial sympathy of the great mass 
of the American people, irrespective of party. 

" Your memorialists most respectfully, but most earnestly, pray that 
all mere party considerations may be thrown aside, and that in this crisis 
in the history of the United States the pure and unselfish patriotism which 
inspired the founders of the Republic may guide your legislative action, 
and that you may thus relieve the country from its present uncertainty 
and apprehensions by a prompt determination of the mode in which the 
pending momentous issue shall be decided. 

" And your memorialists will ever pray," etc. 

The signatures are too many to read. In laying this petition 
before the Senate, it may not be amiss to add an avowal of my 
sympathy with its appeal for orderly, lawful and patriotic action. 
In executing the Constitution in any instance, and especially in 
an instance so grave as the one referred to, partisan feeling as a 
guide and rule of action can rightfully have no place. Obedience 
to law, the observance of the Constitution, and the maintenance 
of truth is not a party question or proceeding; it is beyond party 
and above party. Parties may contend — and I believe it whole- 
some in a free government that parties should contend — over 
measures and candidates. But when the contest has been sub- 
mitted to the ballot-box, the final arbitrament of popular contests 
known in our system, the only duty, the only lawful proceeding, 
connected with it which remains is to find the honest, true result, 
to declare it, bow to it and stand by it. That is the duty of the hour. 

It rests on the two Houses of Congress, it rests on the nation, 
it rests on every citizen of the republic. That it will be done, 
and done peacefully, decently and in order, these petitioners do 
not, I think, disbelieve. They, in common with all men, may 
derive confidence from the fact that interest and expediency not 
less than patriotism and honor point in one direction and teach 
one lesson. Whoever stands on right and truth will not fall ; who- 
ever attempts to stand on wrong and falsehood will be overthrown. 

I move the reference of the petition to the select Committee, 
to which it appropriately belongs. 



5i: 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



We come now to a very important subject, i. e., 
Senator Conkling's part in the preparation of the 
Electoral Commission bill. On motion of Senator 
Edmunds a committee had been appointed to 
consider the subject, and the bill was the joint 
work of many Senators and Representatives of 
both political parties. To use the language of 
one of them — " Mr. Conkling contributed his full 
share of most useful suggestions and phrases." 

Some obituary writers upon Mr. Conkling have 
said that the Electoral Commission was this Sena- 
tor's own creation. This is not strictly true. Mr. 
Conkling led the debate in the Senate upon this 
measure, and made the chief argument for it in a 
speech of two days' duration. It was an effort 
brilliant enouQrh to have adorned the record of 
the greatest American statesman. Since the res- 
toration of the Union no more weighty measure 
than that to establish the Electoral Commission 
has occupied the attention of Congress. 

If this bill had not been enacted, the Presi- 
dential election of 1876 would, perhaps, have been 
settled by a resort to arms, or even by the over- 
throw of the republican form of government. 
Never was the restored Union in such peril as 
when Mr. Conkling so earnestly advocated the 
method by which the disputed vote of 1876 could 
be safely and honorably counted. 



THREA rS TO IN A UG URA TE MR. TILDEN. 5 1 9 

Great excitement prevailed throughout the 
country, and conspicuous Democratic partisans 
uttered ominous threats of a resort to violence, if 
necessary, to force Mr. Tilden upon the nation as 
its President. Men prominent in the late Rebel- 
lion, notably in Kentucky and South Carolina, an- 
nounced their readiness to march on Washington 
with armed mobs of thousands of men. 

The struggle would not have been sectional, 
like the Civil War, but the conflict would have 
been waged in every town of the North. Roscoe 
Conkling did all in his power to avert this terrible 
danger from the nation, and that instance of his 
constructive genius is a perfect answer to those 
who would question his fidelity. 

In a sketch of Mr. Conkling, published in the 
New York Herald, the following reference to the 
Electoral Commission is made: 

One of the greatest services he has rendered to his country 
was in the very prominent share he had in framing the act of 
Congress for an Electoral Commission in 1876. On this occasion 
Mr. Conkling' s habit of close and thorough study of the country's 
history made him not only the best informed, but the only thor- 
oughly mformed, man on all the phases of the very delicate and 
difficult question which was to be settled peaceably, and therefore 
with the consent of reasonable men of both parties. He found 
many of the foremost men of his own and of the other party the 
prey of extreme partisan views, which might, if insisted on, have 
plunged the country into turmoil, and it was owing not only 
largely, but mainly, to his indefatigable labors, to his thorough 
and accurate knowledge of the history of the question and of all 



520 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JROSCOE CONR'LING. 

the precedents, and to the persuasive and commanding force of 
the magnificent speech he delivered in the Senate, that the suc- 
cess of the Electoral Commission bill was due. No living states- 
man has rendered a greater or more important service to the peo- 
ple of this country than he did on this occasion. 

In his recollections of President Grant, Mr. 
George W. Childs, after describing a conference 
of Republican Senators with a leading Democratic 
Congressman at the White House concerning the 
proposed Electoral Commission, thus refers to 
Senator Conkling: 

He [General Grant] sent for Mr. Conkling and said, with deep 
earnestness: "This matter is a serious one, and the people feel it 
very deeply. I think this Electoral Commission ought to be ap- 
pointed." Mr. Conkling answered: "Mr. President, Senator 
Morton (who was then the acknowledged leader of the Senate) is 
opposed to it and opposed to your efforts; but if you wish the 
Commission carried I can>do it." He said: "I wish it done." 
Mr. Conkling took hold of the matter and put it through. The 
leading Democrat I have spoken of took the initiative in the 
House and Mr. Conkling in the Senate. * * * 

It should be stated that the Iron President soon 
afterward resorted to unusual precautionary meas- 
ures to see that his lawful successor was duly in- 
augurated. 

Inasmuch as this subject is of paramount im- 
portance, we venture to give another quotation. 

Referring to the Electoral Commission act, 
Messrs. Cooper and Fenton, in American Politics, 
page 230, state : 



THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION. 52 I 

The leaders on the part of the Republicans in these conferences 
were Conkling, Edmunds and Frelinghuysen; on the part of the 
Democrats, Bayard, Gordon, Randall and Hewitt, the latter a 
member of the House and Chairman of the Democratic National 
Committee. 

The Electoral Commission act, the basis of agreement, was 
supported by Conkling in a speech of great power; and of all men 
engaged in this great work, he was at the time most suspected by 
the Republicans, who feared that his admitted dislike to Hayes 
would cause him to favor a bill which would secure the return of 
Tilden, and as both of the gentlemen were New Yorkers, there 
was, for several days, grave fear of a combination between the 
two. The result showed the injustice done, and convinced there- 
tofore doubting Republicans that Conkling, even as a partisan, was 
faithful and far-seeing. 

According to Section two of the bill " to pro- 
vide for and reg"ulate the counting of the votes for 
President and Vice-President," each House was to 
appoint five of its members, who, with five Asso- 
ciate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, should constitute a commission for the de- 
cision of all questions concerning the certificates 
of the electoral votes. It had been the inten- 
tion of the Committee in the Republican caucus 
to nominate Mr. Conkling as a member of the 
Electoral Commission, but he declined to serve, 
and accordingly Mr. F. T. Frelinghuysen was 
chosen. 

Senator Conkling's noted speech, to which we 
have referred, was delivered January 23 and 24, 
1877. ^^ ^v3^s published in pamphlet form, and 



522 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

covers forty-eight closely printed pages. The gist 
of the speech may be thus given : 

The introductory part is devoted to an exam- 
ination of the Constitution, and leads to the con- 
clusion that the power to count the electoral 
votes is lodged in the two Houses of Congress. 
Relying upon Section eight, Article one, he main- 
tained that Congress had power to prescribe the 
method of ascertaining the result. He then pro- 
ceeded to combat the proposition that the power 
to count the votes was vested in the President of 
the Senate. By numerous precedents he sustained 
his position that in one or another mode of pro- 
ceeding the votes for President and Vice-President 
had been counted by the two Houses from the 
organization of the Government. 

In the course of his argument he had occasion 
to deal with the doctrine of necessity under which 
some one had sought refuge. He denounced it 
as "the arch fiend and foe of Government, the pro- 
lific mother and apology of anarchy, revolution, 
despotism and fraud ever since human govern- 
ment began." 

From first to last Mr. Conklinof declared that 
the electoral bill was not a compromise, but a con- 
stitutionary method to settle differences between 
the two Houses and between the two great parties 
of the country. He maintained, however, that the 



HIS STRENGTH OVERTAXED. 523 

two Houses could act upon the report of the Com- 
mission affirmatively or negatively ; or, by declin- 
ing to act, the report of the Commission would 
itself establish the result. 

Senator Conkling was in poor health during the 
entire winter of 1876-18 77. Upon the conclusion 
of his remarks he walked to the cloak-room, where 
he staggered and fell upon a sofa. He had over- 
taxed his strength, and was utterly exhausted. 
Senator Stewart, of Nevada, came to him at once, 
and with the aid of two porters he was carried 
down stairs and taken in a carriage to his rooms 
at the Arlington Hotel. In spite of his protests, 
Mr. Stewart sent for a physician. Mr. Conkling, 
although always ready to recommend doctors to 
others, was unwilling to employ them with him- 
self. When he reached the hotel his limbs were 
found to be cold, whereupon he was at once rubbed 
with spirits, and quinia administered. He soon ral- 
lied, and seemed for the first time to realize that he 
had been in a precarious condition. Senator Stew- 
art then called attention to the fact that he himself 
had insisted on calling a physician, notwithstand- 
ing Mr. Conkling's objections. The latter jocosely 
replied, "O Stewart, you are a terrible tyrafit !" 

Referring to the debate in the Senate concern- 
ing the bill to establish the Electoral Commis- 
sion, Ben. Perley Poore in his Reminiscefices says : 



524 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

There was an especial desire to hear Senator Conkling, * * * 
and the galleries were crowded with noted men and women, diplo- 
mats, politicians, soldiers and journalists from all sections of the 
republic. 

Mr. Conkling took the floor late in the afternoon. Tall, well- 
proportioned, with his vest opening down to the waist and display- 
ing his full chest and broad shoulders to the best advantage, his 
hair tossed back from his massive brow with studied carelessness, 
his white and slender hands set off by spotless linen, he looked 
every inch a Senator. Before him on his desk were his notes, 
daintily inscribed on gilt-edged, cream-tinted paper ; but he did 
not refer to them, having committed his remarks so thoroughly 
that many believed them to have been extemporaneous. His 
speech was pronounced by good judges as the greatest specimen 
of the *<art which conceals art" that has ever been delivered in 
this country. With apparent candor, good-nature and disinterested 
statesmanship, he adroitly stated his side of the case, reviewing 
what had been done at previous Presidential elections, and show- 
ing that he had given the subject careful study. 

This speech was really his greatest effort. These 
words are used advisedly. It was a habit of the 
Senator's carping critics for many years to say 
scoffingly : " Conkling is about to make 'the great- 
est effort of his life.'" Upon the announcement 
of the vote the day following the national election 
in November, he had foreseen that the result 
would be disputed. He predicted that the ques- 
tion of the exact method of counting the votes for 
President would arise when the electors met at the 
coming session of Congress ; and, accordingly, he 
spent many days in his library looking up the his- 
tory of the subject. 



MANY COMPLIMENTAR Y LE TTERS. 525 

Having delivered the speech upon " The Consti- 
tution and Presidential Elections," Senator Conk- 
ling caused thousands of copies to be printed and 
transmitted to those writing for it. Among the 
many letters which he received from all parts of 
the Union, we print several to show how well Mr. 
Conkling met the approval of the American people. 

Lexington, Kentucky, January 25, 1877. 

Hon. RoscoE Conkling. 

The newspaper reports, imperfect as they are, of your ad- 
mirable speech on the " Compromise Bill " have convinced us of 
its ability and the patriotic motives which prompted it, and have 
created the desire to see it in full. We would respectfully request 
you- to send us copies, or indicate how they can be obtained. 

Being young men, and differing from you politically, most of 
us members of the Tilden and Hendricks Club of this city, we are 
free to express our high esteem of your unpartisan position, and of 
the integrity and talent which have rendered it conspicuous. 
Very truly, 

C. F. Carr and twenty others. 



Louisville, Ky., January 25, 1877. 
Hon. RoscoE Conkling, Washington, D. C. 

Dear Sir: Will you oblige me very much by sending me a 
copy of your speech, delivered within the last few days in the 
Senate, on the " Electoral Compromise Bill "? 

I am a Democrat and voted for Tilden, but I am in favor- 
unreservedly— of the man chosen according to that bill, who- 
ever it may be, and, in common with many of both parties here, 
heartily endorse your action and speech. 

Very resp't'y, 

E. T. Halsey. 



526 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Champaign, Illinois, January 30, 1877, 
Hon. RoscoE Conkling, Washington, D. C. 

Dear Sir: Will you favor me with a few copies of your 
great speech on the so-called " Compromise Bill." Allow me to 
congratulate you on your success. It was a truly noble effort — you 
reflected the sentiments of a great majority of the American people, 
and your earnest efforts to secure a peaceful solution of the Presi- 
dential difficulty will be appreciated by them. 

Yours very respectfully, 

Arthur P. Jackson. 



New Haven, Conn., January 26, 1877. 
Sir: I trust it may be excusable for the writer, a humble 
member of the Republican party, though a stranger to yourself, 
to express his sense of gratification and admiration after reading 
your eloquent and convincing argument in favor of the bill just 
passed in the Senate, for counting the electoral vote, by a majority 
which is itself a striking evidence of the potent influence of the 
effort. Combined with a masterly array and arrangement of facts, 
and close and irresistible logic, there is throughout a lofty and 
elegant style (entirely worthy of the great occasion) which will 
render this speech, years hence, a delightful study as an unique revela- 
tion and example of the plasticity and poivcr of the English tongue 
as a viediiim of expression in the hands of a master; while I ven- 
ture to predict, sir, that to yourself it will remain, as a patriot 
and statesman, a proud souvenir of a great service rendered to 
your country in an hour of doubt and danger. 

With great respect, your obedient servant, 

Wilbur F. Day. 
Hon. RoscoE Conkling, Washington. 

The following letter was written two years later : 

Newport, R. I., August 23, 1879. 
Mv Dear Mr. Conkling : 

Accept my thanks for your most able speech on counting the 
votes for President, so thorough in research, so clear in statement. 



THE ELECTORAL BILL PASSED. 527 

The Nicholas amendment I had not seen ; the result of my own 
study had already been written exclusively from contemporary 
sources, and you cheer me on to .hope that you will find my nar- 
rative on the subject, if I live to present it to you, just and true 
in every particular. 

Again expressing thanks, not formal, but in truth and reality, 
I remain, very truly yours, 

Geo. Bancroft. 



The vote in the Senate on the bill to create the 
Electoral Commission was forty-seven ayes and 
seventeen noes. Of the affirmative votes, twenty- 
one were Republican and twenty-six Democratic; 
and of the noes, sixteen were Republicans and one 
a Democrat. In the House, which was largely 
Democratic, this measure was passed by a vote of 
191 to 86. 

As to the expediency of this enactment, it is not 
too much to say that ninety-five out of every 
hundred men then believed that this act, or some 
similar measure, was the only alternative of civil 
war. There was much discussion as to whether 
the Electoral Commission act was within the pro- 
visions of the Constitution. 

The Republicans in Congress, when voting for 
this bill, knew that it might give the Presidency to 
Mr. Tilden. On the other .hand, if it had been de- 
cided that the President of the Senate should not 
only count the votes, but announce the result 
without appeal, then it would be solely in his 



528 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

power to decide that the Republican party had 
elected the President. Senator Conkling was op- 
posed to the latter method of procedure. This 
peaceful method of settling the disputed election 
of 1876 led interested observers in foreign coun- 
tries to affirm that the result was a greater triumph 
for our republican form of government than had 
been witnessed in the subjugation of the rebel- 
lious States. 

During Mr. Conkling's last illness prominent 
members of the Democratic party asserted that he 
did not believe that Mr. Hayes had been elected 
President. It may be stated before dismissing 
this subject that Mr. Conkling felt that neither 
Mr. Tilden nor Mr. Hayes should be inaugurated. 
His views, as a matter of inference from his re- 
marks, may be thus stated : 

" There are charges of fraud made by each po- 
litical party against the other; and there is some 
evidence in support of these charges. As a Re- 
publican, I prefer that the doubtful title should bs 
given to the Democrats." 

Near the end of the session Mr. Conkling offer- 
ed in the Senate a petition signed by 610 citizens 
of New York, chiefly women, asking for a six- 
teenth amendment prohibiting the several States 
from disfranchising citizens of the United States 
on account of sex. 



THE COMMOTIONS OF A CONTINENT. 529 

President Grant, a few days before his retire- 
ment from the White House, remarked to a friend 
of the biographer that he had appointed very few 
persons to office upon Mr. Conkhng's recommend- 
ation, and he had never regretted the appoint- 
ment of any of them. 

After the inauguration of Mr. Hayes, the spe- 
cial session of the Senate was of short duration. 
The name of Thomas C. Piatt had been discussed 
for the place of Postmaster-General, but William 
M. Evarts, who was not then in harmony with the 
leaders of the party organization, was made Sec- 
retary of State, precluding the appointment of an- 
other member from New York. 

In reply to a recent telegram from many citi- 
zens of Utica thanking him for his part in calming 
" the commotions of a continent," Senator Conk- 
ling wrote the following letter: 

United States Senate Chamber, | 
Washington, March 13, 1877. ) 
Gentlemen: During the hurried, weary hours of almost con- 
tinuous recent sessions of the Senate, and of committees day and 
night, among the many letters and telegrams received from friends 
and strangers alike far and near, was a dispatch from " Home," 
signed by you and by toward 150 other citizens of Oneida 
County. I beg of you to receive an apology for this belated ac- 
knowledgment. You say you ** exult in the choice of a Presi- 
dent whose title cannot be challenged," and because commotion 
is hushed; and you add some kind words, approving the small 
part I had in the solution of the Electoral problem. 
34 



530 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



That serious and lasting harm threatened the well-being of the 
nation; and its standing before the world, probably no intelligent 
person, fully aware of the facts, doubts. The danger is now safe- 
ly overpassed, justly weighed, little credit is due to those who 
wrought in sincerity to avert general danger and harm, because 
they did only their duty, a duty plain to them, and no man de- 
serves special praise for not failing in his duty. Besides, credit 
is not apt to fall in large measure to those by whom harm is turn- 
ed away before it comes, because then the harm is never actually 
felt and realized, and the vague apprehension of it soon vanishes. 

Both these considerations serve to add value to the wholly un- 
expected chorus of friendly voices which came to me from many 
places, when fears of a disputed succession, a headless govern- 
ment, or the installment of two alleged Presidents were all allayed. 

Pleasant as the utterances were, and all the more pleasant, 
perhaps, because undeserved, none could speak like the neigh- 
bors and friends of thirty years. To these neighbors and friends 
my grateful attachment is always due and always deeply felt, and 
I beg you to receive, and, as far as may be, to convey to all who 
joined in the generous telegram, the assurance of my thorough, 
hearty appreciation. 

Uniting with you in the earnest hope that wisdom will now 
give our country repose, and the people of every section will en- 
joy undisturbed the opportunity to devote themselves to their 
own affairs, and to restore the industries, enterprises and business 
interests which have suffered so long and so much, 

I remain, your friend, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

To William H. Watson, M. D., Daniel Batchelor, W. H. 
GiLMORE, Jonathan Jones, Esqs. and others, Utica, N. Y. 

In order to enjoy a much-needed vacation. Sena- 
tor Conkling sailed from the city of New York 
for Europe June i6, 1877. It was his second trip 
to the Old World. A party of friends had chartered 
the steamboat JoIdi H. Stariii, and at the foot of 



SAILS FOR EUROPE. 53 I 

West Twenty-fourth Street Mr. Conkling was 
taken on board and transferred to the steamer 
Mosel, at her dock in Hoboken. During the sail 
across the Hudson a collation was served and 
short speeches were made. In response to the 
compliment, Senator Conkling spoke briefly. 

Had your purpose been [said he] to add to my regret at 
leaving these shores, and to the pangs of this parting, you could 
hardly have chosen a more effective method. Your unexpected 
presence and your exceeding kindness makes it harder to say 
good-bye even for a brief season. Nevertheless it gives me great 
gratification, and will be treasured with grateful remembrance 
wherever I may wander and whatever skies bend above. No 
matter what scenes surround me, or where my feet may tend, my 
thoughts will constantly revisit the friends I leave behind. [Ap- 
plause.] And, gentleman, one of the most pleasant among the 
incidents which I anticipate in my journey abroad, will be to 
thank the English people for England's reception of General 
Grant. [Great and long-continued applause.] 

I see that you, as Americans, will bear me out if I say that 
no occurrence in recent times has done so much to warm the 
breast of the people of America as the warm, generous and 
spontaneous tributes paid by England to the hero and patriot who 
enjoys such primacy in the hearts, the confidence and the affec- 
tion of the American people. [Applause.] It is consoling to 
know that the great English-speaking people of the British Isles 
understand that the American people have not forgotten the 
principles, the measures and the men that in peace preserved and 
in war rescued that nationality which they will pardon us if we 
regard as the greatest nationality on earth. 

When Mr. Conkling came back from Europe, 
on August lo, the greeting which he received was 
most hearty. Perhaps no statesman returning 



532 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

to his native land after a brief sojourn abroad 
was ever met with a warmer reception. Among 
those who welcomed him at his return were sev- 
eral staunch adherents of Mr. Hayes's policy, and 
this was considered a significant sign of the times. 

As the steamer Neckar, on which the Senator was 
a passenger, entered the harbor, the steamboat 
Thomas Collyer, gayly decked with bunting, came 
alongside. The friends of Mr. Conkling gave him 
three cheers, and the band played the national 
airs of Germany and the United States. On arriv- 
ing at the quarantine station the band played 
" Home Again " while the officers were performing 
the routine duties. Senator Conkling stood on 
the bridge, and bowed repeatedly to the enthusi- 
astic group. During the voyage he became Very 
friendly with the captain of the vessel, and the 
latter afterward sent word "that he was patiently 
waiting to see Mr. Conkling President." 

When the Neckar reached her pier, citizens of 
New Jersey and New York vied with each other 
in greeting the returning statesman. Mr. Conk- 
ling was escorted by them to the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel. The same evening he made an extended 
reply to an address of welcome by the Hon. Isaac 
H. Bailey. His eloquent response was largely 
descriptive of the contrast between the cramped 
condition of the Old World and the freedom of 



A CORDIAL WELCOME. 533 

the New; and he was often interrupted with ap- 
plause. Two days later he left the city for Utica. 
At Albany a reception was tendered him. After 
being- introduced by the Hon. Rufus W. Peckham, 
he made a short speech. Leaving in the afternoon 
train, he was welcomed at Schenectady by a large 
crowd of citizens, and greeted by a salute of fifty 
guns. He spoke briefly from the platform of the 
car, thanking his friends for the honor. On arriv- 
ing at Utica in the evening a hearty and generous 
reception awaited him. 

The following circular and letter explain them- 
selves : 

Utica, N. Y., August 7, 1877. 
Dear Sir: It is expected that Senator Conkling will reach 
New York City, on his return from Europe, on the nth, and 
Utica on the evening of the 14th, inst., and as there seems to be 
a general desire among our citizens, without distinction of party, 
to give him a cordial welcome home, a general committee, com- 
posed of the gentlemen above named,* has been formed to make 
suitable preparations for that purpose. 

You are respectfully invited to be present and take part in the 
proceedings of the Committee, a meeting of which will be held at 
Bagg's Hotel, on Friday, August 10, at 7:30 p. M. 
Yours Respectfully, 

Lewis Lawrence, Chairman. 

2^0 the Hon. Roscoe Conkling : 

We, the signers, take this method to convey to you our hearty 
congratulations on your safe arrival home in improved health 
and strength. The services you have rendered to the republic, 



* A list of forty prominpr^t itizens headed this circular. 



534 L^P^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

and especially your grand efforts in the Senate of the United 
States to accomplish a peaceful settlement of the vexed Presi- 
dential question at a time when civil conflict was feared, have 
placed you in the forefront of American statesmen. 

The nation owes you a debt of gratitude for your conspicuous 
action on that memorable occasion. Be assured, honored sir, that 
history will fully record the great wisdom of your words and work. 

It has been well said that "a danger averted is a danger not 
wholly known." 

Recent sad events in our land have made it very plain what 
great danger we passed when the " Electoral Commission bill " 
became a law. We welcome you home to the heart of New York. 
We welcome you as neighbors, and we pray that, whatever station 
you adorn, the choicest blessings of heaven may attend you. 

This addres.s was signed by 325 citizens. Ad- 
ditional lists of signatures from other towns in 
Oneida County were sent to him. These names 
numbered over 500. 

Daniel Batchelor, who acted as manager, wrote 
the following letter: 

Hopper Street, August 14, 1877. 
Dear Mr. Conkling. 

This is an eleventh-hour affair. Had there been more time 
and more deliberation, the lists would have been five times larger 
than they now are. Faithfully yours, 

Daniel Batchelor. 
P. S. — The lists are not all in yet. 

The committee of arrangements met Mr. Conk- 
hng on the train at Little Falls. On leaving the 
station at Utica he was escorted to his house by 
the Utica Citizens Corps and the Committee. The 



UTICA IS ILLUMINATED. 535 

streets through which the procession passed were 
illuminated, and fireworks were displayed at many 
points. The lawn in front of his residence was 
tastefully decorated with Chinese lanterns and 
ligrhted with locomotive lamps, Ex-Senator Francis 
Kernan in a brief address warmly welcomed Mr. 
Conkling home. He responded with an appro- 
priate speech, which was received with enthusiasm. 



September-December, 1877. 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE STATE CONVENTION AT ROCHESTER PRESIDENT 

HAYES AND THE NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE. 

nPHE Senator's next public appearance was at 
the State Convention in September. Early 
that autumn, while Senator Conkling was driving 
in the suburbs of Utica he met a farmer riding" on 
a load of hay. The farmer called to him and (re- 
ferring to a particular opponent) said," Look here. 
Senator, I am told you are going to the State Con- 
vention. If you don't flay that little fellow alive, 
we'll be very much disappointed with you." 

The Convention met at Rochester, September 
26. It was called to order by Alonzo B. Cornell, 
the chairman of the State Committee. The Hon. 
Thomas C. Piatt, representative in Congress from 
the Tioga district, was made temporary chairman. 
He spoke briefly, and criticised the President and 
his Cabinet. He also made a complimentary refer- 
ence to General Grant, which provoked long and 
significant cheers. Senator Conkling was appoint- 
ed chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, and 

536 



THE ROCHESTER CONVENTION. 



>o/ 



drafted the platform excepting the preamble and 
the sections which related strictly to State affairs. 

The Committee on Permanent Organization re- 
ported in favor of Mr. Conkling for president of 
the Convention. He was not in the hall at the 
moment, but upon his arrival he thanked the Conr 
vention for the honor, and then moved to substi- 
tute for his own the name of Mr. Piatt. The storm 
then burst forth. The supporters of Mr. Hayes 
violently assailed Mr. Piatt for criticising the 
Administration. 

The friends of Mr. Conkling were subjected to 
a severe test. Mr. Piatt's speech had been acri- 
monious against Mr. Hayes and his followers. 
Upon roll-call, however, out of 421 votes the yeas 
were 311 and the nays no, thus showing that the 
friends of Senator Conkling were very largely in 
the majority. 

After the readinof of the resolutions Georgfe Will- 
iam Curtis offered an amendment to the effect 
that " the lawful title of Rutherford B. Hayes to 
the Presidency is as clear and perfect as that of 
George Washington," and commending the course 
which he pursued. He spoke at some length in 
support of his amendment, after which a recess 
until evening was taken. Senator Conkling then 
delivered in reply perhaps the severest speech ever 
made by him in a State Convention. At the close, 



538 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

a rising- vote on the amendment was taken, and 
the yeas were 109 and the nays 295. Mr. Curtis's 
proposition was thus rejected by a vote of nearly 
three to one. The resolutions were adopted with- 
out dissent and State officers were then nominated. 
The following is the full and correct text of 
Senator Conkling-'s speech at Rochester : 

It was a woman, a thoughtful woman, who said she always 
noticed that if she did not die in February, she lived all through 
the year. I have noticed that when the Republican party makes 
no mistake in convention it is apt to go safely through a canvass. 
When a convention is wise we always proceed with credit, usually 
with success. Let us make no mistake to-day. Let us stand for 
the integrity of Republican principles, and for the unity of Re- 
publicans. This is not an Administration Convention, nor an 
anti-Administration Convention. We are not representatives of 
an Adjninistration party, nor of an anti- Administration party. 
We are Republicans. We represent a great party. That party 
has a battle to fight just now in every county, district and town, 
and our duty is to Republicans and to their candidates in every 
locality and school district in the State. Administrations do not 
make parties. Parties make Administrations. Parties go before 
Administrations, and live after them. The people make parties. 
The people made the Republican party, and the people have up- 
held it in a career of usefulness and achievement such as no other 
party in history can boast. One of the resolutions asserts that it 
has an uncompleted mission. Yes, it has an exalted mission. If 
it be true to itself and equal to that mission, it will stand in grand- 
eur and in power when the pique and pretensions and rivalries of 
to-day are remembered with pity or forgbtten utterly. Let the 
Republican party be but true to its principles and it cannot then 
be false to any man. 

This is a State Convention. Its business is to nominate can- 
didates for State officers, and to declare the principles on which 
these candidates shall stand and act if they are chosen. Its 



HIS ROCHESTER SPEECH 



539 



business is not to hinder, but to help, by the wisdom and harmony 
of its action, every candidate, not only in the State at large, but 
upon all tickets which are to run in all counties, towns and local- 
ities throughout the State. 

The national Administration is not a candidate or in question 
here. Who has the right to say that it wishes to influence our 
proceedings or to disturb our harmony ? If any man has author- 
ity to speak for it and to bring its views or wishes here, he knows 
it; and when we know him, we shall know whose delegate and 
representative he is. I will not assume that any man has been 
entrusted to introduce matters foreign to our duties and calcu- 
lated to foment discord among those of the same household of 
faith. I repel the idea that the national Administration suggests 
or sanctions any such proceeding. He who volunteers for such 
a purpose may be found wanting in the discretion of friendship, 
if not in its sincerity also. It has been said that other State 
conventions have sometimes expressed opinions about national 
affairs, including specific arts of national officials. They have 
frequently done so, no doubt. County and town conventions 
have done the same thing. National conventions have some- 
times expressed opinions about State concerns, and even about 
affairs of cities. Nobody can deny the right of each convention 
to decide for itself what it shall say and what it will not say. 
Every convention which has said one thing, or omitted or refused 
to say another, has so decided for itself; and did any one ever 
before hear this right or propriety challenged? Many State con- 
ventions before this have decided to say nothing about particular 
topics prominent at the time; many State conventions have omit- 
ted to refer even to the State officers, whose action had been 
widely discussed. Silence in regard to men and things not re- 
quiring the vote and action of the Convention has been not only 
common, but usual, in cases of divided opinion, and in cases of un- 
timely attempts to make' issues and obtain committals touching oc- 
currences already past and fixed, or upon affairs not far enough 
advanced to afford ground for ultimate and safe judgment. To 
speak plainly, there are special reasons, just now, inviting the 
Convention to adhere calmly and firmly to its own sense of pro- 
priety and wisdom. The Republicans of this State have been 



540 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

summoned for weeks, with somewhat of menace and truculent 
dictation, to declare this and declare that, and broad hints have 
been given of retribution if they dare even to remain silent.' The 
Marshal of France has just attempted to degrade and punish a 
Frenchman for uttering his sentiments. Perhaps he has suc- 
ceeded, but Americans, it seems, are now to be chastised for 
holding their peace. Not yet. Exotic despotism, revised and 
improved, will not grow in American soil. It will perish. It 
would be trodden out, if it did not die out. Who are these 
oracular censors so busy of late in brandishing the rod over me 
and every other Republican in this State? Some man has said, 
"I am of age in the Republican party." So am I. For the last 
twenty-two years I have labored for it and stood by its flag; and 
never in twenty-two years have I been false to its principles, its 
cause, or its candidates. Who are these men who, in newspapers 
and elsewhere, are cracking their whips over Republicans and 
playing school-master to the Republican party and its conscience 
and convictions? They are of various sorts and conditions. 
Some of them are the"^* * * the dilettanti and carpet knights 
of politics men whose efforts have been expended in denouncing 
and ridiculing and accusing honest men who, in storm and in sun, 
in war and peace, have clung to the Republican flag and defend- 
ed it against those who have tried to trail and trample it in the 
dust. Some of them are men who, when they could work them- 
selves into conventions, have attempted to belittle and befoul 
Republican administrations and to parade their own thin veneer- 
ing of superior purity. Some of them are men who, by insisting 
that it is corrupt and bad for men in ofiice to take part in politics, 
are striving now to prove that the Republican party has been un- 
clean and vicious all its life, and that the last campaign was venal 
and wrong and fraudulent, not in some of the States, but in all 
the States, North and South. For it is no secret that m all States 
office-holders, in committees, in organisations and everywhere, 
did all that men could fairly do to uphold the candidates of our 
party, and that they were encouraged and urged to do so. Some 
of these worthies masquerade as reformers. Their vocation and 
ministry is to lament the sins of other people. Their stock in 
trade is rancid, canting self-nghteousness. They are wolves in 



)( Wcouub - VvuciXv^tA-M^ 



HIS ROCIf ESTER SPEECH. 



541 



sheep's clothing. Then- real object is office and plunder. When 
Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, 
he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses 
of the word "Reform." Yet long before Johnson lived some- 
thing was known of a class of men who take the name of " re- 
form ' ' in vain. ' 

A wise man wrote Christian precepts in China 500 years 
before Mary's son walked beneath the bending palms of Pal- 
estine. And this sage teacher warned his followers, with un- 
erring point, against the>very impostures and perversions which 
these' days find employed to daze and bewilder the American 
people. Some of those now laying down new and strange tenets 
for Republicans, sat but yesterday in Democratic Conventions, 
some have sought nominations at the hands of Democrats in re- 
cent years, and some, with the zeal of neophytes and bitterness of 
apostates, have done more than self-respecting Democrats would 
do to vilify and slander their Government and their countrymen. 
Grant, and all who stood by that upright, fearless magistrate, 
have been objects of the bitter, truthless aspersions of these men. 
And now, opposed or laggard in the battles of the past, they leap 
forward to the feast. They forget that parties are not built up by 
deportment, or by ladies' magazines, or gush. It used to be said 
of certain Democrats in Massachusetts that they wanted, by their 
obnoxious officiousness, to keep the party in that State as small 
as they could in order to make the stockholders as few and the 
dividends as large as possible. I hope these new-fledged dicta- 
tors are not aiming at the same thing in New York. The orass- 
hoppers in the corner of a fence, even without a newspaper to be 
heard in, sometimes make more noise than the flocks and herds 
that graze upon a thousand hills. A Chinese war of noises has 
been set up and kept up in the State and beyond the State to 
drive this Convention and its members to contend and divide 
over certain dogmas, bikt it is for the Convention to say what its 
judgment and sense of propriety indicate as suitable and wise. 
An important election is at hand — important in counties and in 
Assembly districts — and we are told that we must not keep within 
our sphere of duty, but must find bones of contention to carry 
schism and discord down into every locality, to distract and weak- 



542 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

en our party everywhere. The wisdom of these somewhat per- 
emptory directions is the question before us. 

The propriety of denouncing and carping at administrative 
acts on very small occasion has not been without advocates. 
This doctrine, as sometimes maintained, I believe to be unjust to 
public officials. It seems to me public officers are entitled to 
presumptions in their favor, and ought never to be condemned 
until they and their acts have been fairly tried, and then only on 
clear evidence. 

For extreme license in criticism of administrations and of 
everybody connected with them, broad arguments can no doubt 
be found. Many might be found in the files of the journal made 
famous by the pencil of Nast. But a convention may not deem 
itself a chartered libertine of oracular and pedantic conceits. It 
may not believe that theories and antagonisms and resentments 
constitute the duty of the hour. It may believe that men who 
are agreed in all essentials of their faith and of their work, when 
they are acting for a great organization, should be willing to 
forego non-essentials for the good of the cause. It may believe 
— I hope this Convention does believe — that no Rejmblican should 
seek to wound and wrong another by compelling him to surrender 
his convictions in matters of individual belief. If so much tol- 
eration could not be accorded, party action would be abortive. 
Were this Convention agreed about any matter fit to commend to 
the public, and thought it wise to present it, there could, of course, 
be no objection to so doing. Is that the case with the subjects 
imported by the pending amendment? I ask this of you who 
have heard this debate and the tone and manner sometimes as- 
sumed. Could anything more fully reveal a deep and abiding 
conflict of judgment? We find a wide difference of understand- 
ing as to what has in reality been, and what is to be, the action 
and position of the national authorities, then we find a wide dif- 
ference of opinion as to the right and wisdom of particular pro- 
ceedings, is one part of the Convention to coerce the other part 
to surrender its judgment and its conscience, or are we to present 
the spectacle of a convention agreed about everything before it, 
but splitting and quarreling over matters not falling within the 
scope of its duties, and all this that the soothsayers and phrase- 



HIS ROCHESTER SPEECH. 5^)3 

mongers may have their way ? There seems huge anxiety to ply 
the Republicans of this State with catechisms and test-oaths, and 
to place them in false positions. We read a great deal and hear 
a great deal of rumors of wars to be waged, and crusades to be 
preached, and vengeance to be wreaked. What is the meaning 
of all this? Why Republicans of New York should be thought 
predisposed to find fault with Mr. Hayes passes my comprehen- 
sion. They nominated him, they gave him more votes for his 
nomination than any other State did or could give him. Without 
them he 'could never have become the candidate. These votes 
came mostly from men who felt " bound in honor and bound in 
morals '■' truthfully to represent the constituency which had trusted 
them. Even the member from Richmond was, I believe, in the 
end prevailed upon, after much difficulty, to confer his unique 
and delicate vote also. The Republicans of New York made one 
of the most faithful and arduous canvasses ever made for the 
success of a ticket, and under needless and perplexing embarrass- 
ments they gave it an unexampled vote. The Republicans of the 
delegation in Congress from New York, with few exceptions, 
heartily supported the measure without which Mr. Hayes would 
never have been effectually inaugurated, a measure of which one 
in great authority said, as reported in the New York Times : 
"And now, looking back after my observation and experience of 
men and things in Washington during the progress of the count, 
by the instrumentality of that commission I am thoroughly per- 
suaded that its creation and organization and action saved us from 
anarchy, confusion and civil war. I believe its adoption was a 
dictate of wisdom and patriotism." These are the words of Mr. 
Stanley Matthews, and his close and influential relationships give 
special importance to all he says. Mr. Matthews might have 
added another thing about the Electoral Commission. He might 
have said that its decision, and the fact that a tribunal with 
judicial powers did decide, is the one chief ground on which the 
title to the Presidency is now upheld and defended. During the 
only session which has occurred since the fourth of March — a 
session of the Senate — if opposition was made to any measure of 
the Administration, that opposition did not come from New York. 
Surely no Republican in this State has made war on the present 



544 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF KOSCOE CONK'LING. 



Administration to my knowledge. What, then, is the meaning 
and purpose of constantly, from the first, accusing Repubhcans 
of this State of unfriendly bias toward the President? 

It cannot be denied that wanton assaults have been made on 
Republicans and kept up by newspapers, supposed to be inspired 
by the advisers and champions of the President. It cannot be 
denied that other assaults and acts of hostility are constantly oc- 
curring, which it is hard to reconcile with the wish of their authors 
to preserve the Republican party. It is equally hard to reconcile 
much that we witness, with consistency and fairness. If the 
Convention will pardon a personal allusion, I will illustrate this 
in my own case, though other cases are not less marked. We 
hear unmeasured denunciation of men holding office taking part 
in political campaigns. Last year I was an office-holder, as I am 
this year. Prostrate health and malarial disease, contracted in 
Washington, disabled me for months. It was out of the question 
to undertake the labors of the canvass. But contrary to the 
positive injunctions of my physician, I attempted to address my 
neighbors on the issues of the day, and the attempt gave sufficient 
caution against its repetition. Because I did not and could not 
do more, I, an office-holder, have been bitterly denounced far and 
wide to this day, and by the same men who now insist that every 
man in office, who even signs a notice of a convention, shall be 
degraded and removed, so flagrant is it deemed, of a sudden, for 
office-holders to take any part in the work of the Republican party. 

But let me illustrate the apparent determination to assail and 
create disturbance among Republicans. Since the spring session 
of the Senate no occasion has existed, none has been given by me, 
to the new-found party overseers to administer correction. About 
half the time I have been absent from the country, in the hope of 
eradicating some troublesome remains of fever. When in the 
country I have been always pressingly occupied by matters of 
business, accumulated during protracted illness and absences from 
home ; politics have not engaged me ; no utterance hostile to men 
or measures has proceeded from me. Not a straw has been laid 
in the way of any man, or of his ambition or schemes. But still 
I have been the subject of persistent assault and misrepresenta- 
tion, coming, it so happens, from those claiming to speak specially 



HIS ROCHESTER SPEECH 



545 



for the national Administration. On returning home, a few words 
of greeting could not be spoken to neighbors and personal friends 
of both parties without drawing down bitter and scornful denun- 
ciation for not making a political speech indorsing the policy of 
the Administration. These anxious and super-serviceable chari- 
oteers seem determined to know nothing but the President and his 
policy and them crucified. To say a word of things at home or 
abroad has been treated as a crime. To say nothing at all has 
been to be reproached and vilified constantly. Appeals, public 
and private, have been addressed to my neighbors begging them 
not to send me to this Convention, and these appeals stated the no 
doubt unauthorized pretence that my selection would not be agree- 
able to the national authorities. The meaning of all this is not 
obscured by the fact that the new President has been surrounded 
and courted by men who have long purred about every new Ad- 
ministration, some of them for more years than many of you have 
lived. Some of these disinterested patriots and reformers have 
been since the days of Pierce the friends and suitors of all ad- 
ministrations and betrayers of all. The assaults they incite are 
somewhat annoying, and my nature is one less inclined to meek- 
ness and long-suffering than it should be. 

, It would have been a luxury to unfrock some of the m.en and 
some of the purposes engaged in this work, but it has seemed to 
me the duty of every sincere Republican, especially of one so 
deeply indebted as I to the Republican party, to endure a great 
deal rather than say or do anything tending to introduce division 
or controversy into the party ranks. For this reason not a word 
of reply has escaped me. In time it may be thought just, as well 
in this case as in others hardly less marked, to call off the dogs. 

For one, I deeply regret all these things. In so far as they 
are personal and aimed at individuals, they are of little conse- 
quence; in so far as they are acts of those who heretofore de- 
serted and betrayed the Republican party, and are now striving 
to make it subserve their personal advancement, they need not be 
wondered at. But their tendency is hurtful, and cannot be mis- 
understood nor entirely ignored. I am not for making these 
things the subject of action here. I am for the peace and pros- 
perity of this country, and of all its people in every section and in 
35 



546 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

every State. I am for everything tending to that end. One thing 
which does tend to that end is the ascendancy of the RepubHcan 
party. I am therefore for the unity of RepubHcans and the in- 
tegrity of their principles. I am for one thing more, and that is 
the success of the national Administration — its success in every- 
thing that is just and wise and real, according to the Constitution 
and the law, and the common sense, and interest of the nation. 
The future will test the sincerity of all concerned in this respect. 

Mr, Hayes, when inaugurated, deserved from the party which 
supported him just what Mr. Lincoln and General Grant deserved 
at the outset of their Administrations. What is that ? Fair, 
friendly, dispassionate consideration of his acts. Whenever he is 
right, he should be sustained; whenever he is misled by unwise or 
sinister advice, at the proper time and in the proper spirit dissent 
should be expressed. This right of judgment is the right of every 
citizen. It is a right which, in common with others, I exercised 
personally and in the seats in which I have been honored in the 
national councils, under the Administrations both of Mr. Lincoln 
and of General Grant. Neither of them ever objected to this. 
Both were thankful to any man who in good faith stated reasons 
corrective of their action. They never deemed an honest differ- 
ence of opinion cause for war or quarrel, nor were they afflicted 
by having men long around them engaged in setting on newspapers 
to hound every man who was not officious or abject in fulsomely 
bepraisitig them. They sometimes made mistakes too, and they 
manfully corrected them and retraced false steps in presence of 
the whole people more than once. Who has the right to suppose 
that Mr. Hayes will, in these respects, differ from his illustrious 
predecessor ? Whenever any member of this Convention is called 
upon to sit in judgment on any matter, he must for himself, and 
on his own conscience and reason, pronounce upon it. 

The matters suggested by the pending amendment are not 
pertinent to this day's duties, and obviously they are matters of 
difference. They may promote personal and selfish aims, but 
they are hostile to concord and good understanding between Re- 
publicans at a tin:;ie when they should all be united everywhere, 
in purpose and action. Let us agree to put contentions aside and 
complete our task. Let us declare the purposes and methods 



HIS ROCHESTER SPEECH. 547 

which should guide the government of our great State. On this 
platform let us place upright, capable men, and then let us appeal 
to the people to decide whether such men shall conduct their affairs 
on such principles, or whether they would rather trust spurious 
reformers under the lead and dominion of our political opponents. 

One or two other topics have been brought to your notice, of 
which something might well be said. 

An eloquent gentleman from Chemung, who, if I mistake not, 
agreed to the report of the Committee, has since told us some- 
thing which, without offence to him, I must regard as perhaps the 
wildest flight of logic heard in the debate. He fears that we shall 
discourage turbulent spirits in the South from abstaining from vio- 
lence by seeming to distrust them. These violent disturbers of 
the past, he fears, will have their feelings hurt by knowing that 
the Republicans of New York are waiting hopefully, but fearing- 
ly, to see whether they really mean hereafter to abide in the paths 
of peace. The law-breakers, who have defiled the communities 
in which they live by acts which affright humanity, may or may 
not belong to the "conquering element " referred to by the gen- 
tleman from Broome. The " conquering element " was first in- 
troduced into the vocabulary of Republican Conventions by the 
member from Richmond, as he was reported last year at Saratoga. 
He there presented himself as belonging to a " conquering ele- 
ment " in the party, and declared that no man should be placed 
in nomination except by the approbation of this newly-announced 
upper class of Republicans. Had I been a delegate, curiosity 
would have led me to inquire how, in a body of peers where all 
men have the rights of equals, met to confer in a co-mmon busi- 
ness, it could be that any coterie was of right superior to the rest. 
It would be instructive to know whether an order of nobility or 
gentry exists in our party, and whence come the patents which 
confer ascendant prerogatives. 

The gentleman from Chemung, returning to him, seemed to 
fear that discouragement in well-doing and hurt feelings would 
come from any distrust we might evince in the yet unproved sin- 
cerity of the recent exuberant professions of men who have hereto- 
fore stained their hands in political contests with the blood of the 
poor, the defenceless and the ignorant. 



548 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Not being a prophet or the son of a prophet, I am still willing 
to hazard the prediction that the reverse will prove true. If any- 
thing can curb and chain up the wolves and tigers v/ho have 
preyed on Southern peace in the past, it will be to know that the 
eyes of the North are on them, an^ that the action of the North- 
ern people will depend on whether they hereafter abstain from 
deeds of violence and massacre. 

It is fortunate, indeed, if no error has crept into the reported 
platform except words telling those who have spilled 'innocent 
blood that they are on trial before the country, and that the people 
of New York are waitingin solicitude to see them mend their ways. 

Justice to the presiding ofificer, whose position excludes him 
from the debate, demands reference to a remark which fell from 
a delegate from Westchester. He said I urged upon the Presi- 
dent the presiding officer as a candidate for Postmaster-General. 
Never! I never communicated oh such a topic with the President 
before or after his inauguration. Whatever may have been the 
offences or shortcomings of him who has been honored by your 
confidence, and trusted by New York to cast one of her votes in 
the Senate, he has never degraded his State or degraded you by 
thrusting himself, uninvited, where he had no right, nor by solicit- 
ing favors at the footstool of executive power. Had the Repub- 
lican Senator from New York been inquired of by the incoming 
President, as he was not, he would have said that a long day's 
journey might not bring him to a man better fitted, by integrity, 
executive ability, and careful business habits, to be Postmaster- 
General than the unswerving Republican from Tioga, who, with- 
out provocation known to me, has been rudely and boisterously 
buffeted in the hearing of this Convention. 

The member from Richmond was funny, as is his wont, in re- 
lating an anecdote of some Senator in connection with Mr. Lin- 
coln. I did not understand, as other members did, that he in- 
tended either by neglect or innuendo, to imply that that Senator 
is the one who now stands before you. If he did so intend, I 
hope he will so signify. 

Mr. Curtis: Mr. President, when the gentleman says that he 
did not suppose I referred to him, he was entirely, entirely correct. 

JSIr. Conkli?ig: Then I withhold a statement I intended to 



HIS ROCHESTER SPEECH. 549 

make, and I substitute for it a remark which I hope will not 
transgress the proprieties or liberties of this occasion. It is this; 
If a doubt arose in my mind whether the member from Richmond 
intended a covert shot at me, that doubt sprang from the fact 
that that member has published, in a newspaper, touching me, not 
matters political — political assault fairly conducted no man ever 
heard me complain of — but imputations upon my personal integ- 
rity so injurious and groundless, that as I think of them now, 
nothing but the proprieties of the occasion restrain me from de- 
nouncing them and their author as I feel at liberty to do in the 
walks of private life. Mr. President, according to that Christian 
code which I have been taught, there is no atonement in the thin 
lacquer of public courtesy, or of private ceremonial observance, 
for the offence one man does another when he violates that pro- 
vision of the decalogue, which, speaking to him, says, '* Thou 
shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," and which 
means thou shalt not do it, whatever thy personal or political 
pique or animosity may be. 

The member from Richmond did me honor overmuch in an 
individual if not personal exhortation wherein he was pleased to 
run some parallel between himself and me. 

He denies that he has brought a firebrand among us — he in- 
sists that it has been in pursuit of harmony that we have been de- 
tained without need or use to this late hour, when our task might 
have been completed in the day, and we might have bidden each 
other God-speed homeward — and he implies that others do not hold 
as sincerely as he holds the purpose of maintaining purity and effi- 
ciency in the civil service, and in every concern and interest of our 
country. All thismust undergo the judgment of others, and of time. 

Let me supplant the parallel by recalling a remark of a great 
Crusader when Richard of England and Leopold of Austria had 
held dispute over the preliminaries of battle: " Let the future de- 
cide between you, and let it declare for him who carries furthest 
into the ranks of the enemy the sword of the cross." * 

* It will be observed that Mr. Conkling praises General Grant and di- 
rects his remarks against Mr. Curtis. Careful observers have since de- 
clared that the allusions to General Grant by Messrs. Piatt and Conkling 
were the first efforts to crystallize public sentiment in favor of a third term. 



550 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

X This speech had been read by him on the Sun- 

day preceding the Convention to a warm poH- 
tical friend, who pronounced it " too severe." 
From a " regular " Repubhcan point of view, it 
is an unanswerable argument against preten- 
tious political aspirants, who, when shut out 
from the councils of the party and the patron- 
age, desert from its ranks. 

A newspaper critic says of this speech: 

* * * It should be perused by every Republican in the United 
States. It is one of the most masterly productions of the day, 
and it will require long and diligent search to find its superior in 
Congressional or even parliamentary debates. Neither Pitt, 
Burke or Sheridan could have more triumphantly vindicated 
himself under corresponding circumstances. 

After the Convention at Rochester, so many of 
the Republican newspapers of the State came out 
in open hostility to Mr. Conkling that his friends 
reofarded it as essential that one should be estab- 
lished in his favor. Accordingly his life-long 
friend, Lewis Lawrence, in October, 1877, began 
the publication of the Utica Republican. It was not 
a financial success, and was discontinued at the 
end of fifteen months. Meanwhile, however, Mr. 
Conkling had been re-elected to the Senate. The 
Southern policy of the Hayes administration was 
utterly at variance with the reconstructionary 
measures which Mr. Conkling had always sus- 



CIVIL SERVICE ABSURDITIES. 55 I 

tained ; and he had no sympathy with the new 
methods of conciliation and civil service reform 
policy. His sentiment in regard to the recent 
civil service act is forcibly set forth in a 
question which he put to the President of the 
American Geographical Society. He said that 
during an examination in England for the position 
of a copyist, the applicant was asked, " What three 
rivers empty into the Caspian Sea ? " The gentle- 
man just referred to had been for twenty years at 
the head of the Geographical Society, nevertheless 
he was unable to answer. 

In the summer of 1877, when Senator Conkling 
was in London, he attended a dinner-party given 
by Mr. George W. Smalley, the correspondent of 
the New York Tribune. In a letter from London 
dated May 4, 1888, Mr. Smalley thus describes 
the conversation. 

The Senator talked long on, or rather against, civil service 
reform and in favor of the practice summed up in the maxim 
that to the victors belong the spoils. There was among the com- 
pany an Englishman who is himself one of the best talkers and 
debaters of the period. I asked him what he thought of Conk- 
ling's statement. He answered, '' The most brilliant defence I 
ever heard of an utterly indefensible thing." It had been, indeed, 
so fascinating to those present that nobody had cared to break in 
upon his conversation, except by a question here or there, so that 
his talk became almost a speech — a rare thing indeed at a dinner- 
table in England, and a rare compliment to the man who so de- 
lighted his fellow-guests that they preferred listening to joining 
in the discussion. 



552 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

A long interview of Mr. Conkling with a re- 
porter of the New York Herald was printed in 
that journal November 9, 1877. We give a few 
extracts. 

A GREAT STATE. 

" Mr. Conkling," said the questioner, " is not New York a 
very difficult State for one to keep in public life long ? Even De 
Witt Clinton, your father's friend, was once or twice shaken from 
his perch, and with difficulty recovered power." 

"Yes," said Mr. Conkling, "It was difficult in his day, and it 
is more difficult now. The State of New York, in Governor Clin- 
ton's time, was comparatively homogeneous." " Do you know," 
added Mr. Conkling, " that in the city of New York eighty-four 
languages and dialects are spoken ? The State has cast as many 
as 1,018,000 votes. Here is a mighty swarm of people, 5,000,000 
in number, with a thousand clews to their tastes and wishes. A 
man might be Senator from the State of New York for thirty 
years, and even his name would not be known to a large fraction 
of those entitled to vote for him. What I may call the ascensive 
power of a republican people is always developing here: wealth, 
ambition, ideas, talent, rise constantly from the mass of the people, 
and the law of everything is competition. There is a great wealthy 
class, for instance, in New York, ambitious of consideration, and 
restive at seeing men from smaller cities in the ascendancy. The 
legal profession, also, has wealth, and desires public distinction. 
No State in the Union presents more people for the great offices 
of honor or distinction." 

SUPERFINE PEOrLE. 

" In this city, \lx. Conkling, the most determined opponents 
you have seem to show themselves." 

" Yes, there are about three hundred persons here who believe 
themselves to 'occupy the solar walk and milky way,' and even up 
there they lift their skirts very carefully for fear even the heavens 
might stain them. Some of these people would vote against a 
man because he had been nominated. The mere fact of nomina- 



HA YES REPUBLICANS AND THE DEMOCRA TS. 



55. 



tion and selection reduces him in their estimation. They would 
have people fill the offices by nothing less than divine selection. 
If it were not so amusing, one would lose patience with this class 
of people; they are after the unattainable in human government." 

THE MASSACHUSETTS VICTORY. 

"What is your opinion of the Massachusetts election, which the 
Hayes men are claiming as a victory for the policy ? " 

" That election shows only how well real party-men behave. 
The men who dislike the policy and could see no honesty in the 
President's position on the Southern question, nevertheless, walked 
to the polls and cast their ballots for the Republican candidates. 
The Hayes men also voted in Massachusetts. But in this State 
of New York I charge that the Hayes element was not only indif- 
ferent to the election, but voted the Democratic ticket by hosts. 
The State of New York is Democratic to-day by the act of the 
supporters of the President." 

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY SHOULD LIVE. 

<*Mr. Conkling, is there any good reason for disbanding the 
Republican party at this time ? " 

" If there has been any time within the past ten years when the 
party was worth preserving, in the interest of taxpayers particu- 
larly, it is now. The Democratic party has three elements in it. 
First, there is the South, arrogant, advancing, driven on by the 
Southern constituents, who have lost everything. They were com- 
pelled to repudiate the Confederate debt, and to strike off the 
pensions to their soldiery. Why should not they take as much 
as possible from the North ? In the light of human nature they 
are hardly to be blamed for looking upon the federal treasury as 
something which has been used to their disadvantage, but can 
now be employed to liquidate the balance. Then we have the 
East, of which New York is the Democratic citadel. Here it is 
Tammany Hall, and John Kelly, and the Canal Ring. This is an- 
other predatory element. In the last place, the Western Demo- 
cracy is composed of two great wings — inflation and agrarianism. 
The Republican party alone at such a time can properly repre- 



554 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



sent the property-holder and the taxpayer. Don't you see that 
the Southern element, being powerful in the Democratic caucus, 
can compel the whole party to support their measures ? 

" That is why I look upon these wealthy men of New York as 
foolish. They are to be the sufferers if this nation passes into 
the hands of a party controlled by the South and is ruled in the 
North by evil traditions and the socialistic elements." 



HAYES SOUTHERN POLICY. 

" Senator, criticism on President Hayes seems to be defective, 
because it does not substitute any kind of action in place of the 
action that he has thought fit to take." 

" There is no considerable element in the Republican party," 
said Senator Conkling, " which objects to the removal of troops 
from the Southern States. I have made no objection on that score. 
But all that was required of him was to take out the troops, and 
nothing else. He had no right to make a bargain or compromise 
with the Legislature of the State in the interests of the Presidency. 
His interfering with a State by compromise or bargain was as 
much a violation of the law as if he had interfered with troops 
and by arms." 

^ * -x- * * * * 

An extra session of the Forty-fifth Congress had 
been called for October 25. One of the questions 
before it was the admission of M. C. Butler as a 
Senator from South Carolina. Mr. Conkling spoke 
upon the subject as follows: 

Some principles will not be disputed in the case of any claim- 
ant, even one wearing such proud distinctions as we have heard 
of in this debate. A gentleman, a gentleman deemed important 
enough by a sovereign State to be talked of for Senator — and 
such a personage is entitled to no more consideration than the 
humble man whose testimony has been read and who, whatever 
his lot, fate, or color, is a born leader of men. He may be un- 



ROOSE VEL T AND PRINCE NOMINA TED. 555 

lettered, he may have been painted black by nature's brush, he 
may be descended from tiger-hunters of the Gold Coast of Africa; 
but of whatever race he is, no man ever did the acts he recounts 
unless he had in him the stuff and metal which constitute pri- 
macy among men. He may not be a gentleman in the estimation 
of the proud and the dominant, but whether he wears robes or 
rags, I would accept his plighted faith with more confidence than 
I would take the oath of any man — no matter if the blood of all 
the Howards be running in his veins — who was ever, in coldness 
or in passion, accessory before or after the fact, when the de- 
fenceless, the ignorant, the inoffensive, the harmless, were brutally 
shot down, as this testimony recounts. 

A difference between the Executive and Senator 
Conkling occurred in December. Messrs. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt and L. Bradford Prince, had been 
nominated to succeed Chester A. Arthur and Al- 
onzo B. Cornell as Collector and Naval Officer of 
the port of New York. 

The ostensible reason was furnished by the re- 
port of a commission consisting of " Independent 
Republicans " who were hostile to Senator Conk- 
ling and to his supporters. After months of inves- 
tigation this commission made a series of reports, 
which, to a great extent, revived old questions, 
while containing suggestions for many needed re- 
forms. General Arthur, hov^ever, had anticipated 
every improvement which was recommended. He 
had urged their adoption upon the very department 
in which the commission originated, and had actual- 
ly put in operation many of the recommendations. 



556 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The President was really endeavoring to remove 
the very introducer of the reforms which he him- 
self professed to desire. 

Senator Conkling had no sympathy with the 
pretensions which had been put forth. 

Although the names of Roosevelt and Prince 
were favorably reported upon by the Committee 
to which they had been referred, yet when, on the 
twelfth of December, the question of confirmation 
was before the Senate, they were rejected by a 
vote of thirty-two to twenty-five. Among those 
voting against confirmation were two Democrats 
and one Independent — the Hon. David Davis, of 
Illinois. Six Republicans favored these appoint- 
ments. 

Prior to the roll-call an exciting contest of some 
six hours took place in the Senate. Then it was 
that Mr. Conkling made a forcible speech, which 
is referred to in Chapter XXI. It is described 
there as fully as it would be proper to relate what 
occurred in the executive session. By this vic- 
tory Senator Conkling showed his capacity as a 
leader in consolidating his own power and in- 
fluence in New York, which was morally certain 
to be the deciding State in the next Presidential 
election. 

Mr. Arthur, two days after the vote in the Sen- 
ate, wrote the following letter : 



ME. A R THUR' S A CKNO WLED G ME NTS. 557 

New York, December 13, 1877. 

My Dear Sir: I cannot tell you how gratified I am at the 
splendid victory you have won — apart from and way beyond 
any personal considerations of my own. The whole town is ex- 
cited by the event, and the current of popular feeling is all with 
you. I recall your saying, the last time I saw you, that " within 
a month it v/ould be lawful to speak the truth." 

You have had to bear the whole burden of the fight. I 
deeply regret that we could do no more to help you at this 
end. We tried all we could, but nothing seems to have been of 
any avail. 

I appreciate how great the strain must have been upon you, 
and hope you will now be able to get a little rest. For myself 
personally I thank you cordially for your vindication of my offi- 
cial character. 

We hope to see you here soon, and to hear the details of the 
battle. Yours faithfully, 

C. A. Arthur. 

The Honorable Roscoe Conkling. 

Messrs. Arthur and Cornell were, however, sus- 
pended, July II, 1878, after the adjournment of 
Congress. Edwin A. Merritt and Silas W. Burt 
were respectively appointed in their place as Col- 
lector and Naval Officer, and afterward confirmed, 
February 3, 1879. 

Despite Mr. Conkling's insistence in relation to 
the Presidential appointments in New York, he 
seldom took any part in regard to subordinate offi- 
cers. During the terms of Messrs. Arthur and 
Cornell, the Senator did not visit the Custom 
House more than once a year. General Arthur's 
deputy has informed the biographer that Mr. 



558 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Conkling asked for few appointments — at most 
half a dozen ; and Mr. Cornell states that Senator 
Conkling then recommended no one for appoint- 
ment. 

Concerning Mr. Conkling's struggle with Presi- 
dent Hayes, the following newspaper extracts are 
of sufficient interest to warrant publication. They 
are given as an index of public sentiment. 

The Chicago Tribime, which has been stren- 
uously opposed to Senator Conkling, says : "The 
defeat of the Administration in the matter of the 
New York Custom - House appointments is no 
more than the country had reason to expect, and 
the wonder in the matter is that the Senate vote 
was not more unanimous. The President was in 
the wrong." 

George Alfred Townsend reviews the Senatorial 
battle in the Philadelphia Times in his lively 
fashion. We make some extracts : 

There has never been, in my view, a more artistic piece of 
work than Conkling's speech against Butler, of South Carolina, 
made at the critical period of his New York confirmations. There 
he stood with his personage imperiled by every word he spoke, 
yet speaking with his best partisan effectiveness. Spectators and 
reporters said : " He has incensed the South as well as Patterson 
and Conover; now the Democrats will give his appointments fits." 
But in the splendid piloting of that speech he gave the enemy his 
broadside, passed the bar without scraping, stood off and saluted, 
and all said : "There's a sailor!" His own party was brought 
together by fear and admiration ; the Democrats rather respected 



CONKLING AS A PARTY DISCIPLINARIAN. 559 

his pluck and couldn't impugn his language. * * * More 
than thirty years ago Henry Clay, in the nobility of his faculties, 
undertook to bridle a President, but he never could get the Demo- 
crats to help him do it. Clay lacked the clear, wilful, educated 
intellect of Conkling; the public man has advanced since the 
days of Clay. Clay was swelling and indiscriminate, and attacked 
too much. 

Thus, getting aid and comfort from the Democrats, Conkling 
has put rigorous discipline in the Republican party. All the 
stray sheep have been barked up. The Senate majority has an- 
nexed the State Department and proposes to run it. They are 
shaping the policy instead of the Administration, and during the 
holidays will go right along forging thunderbolts. 

******* 

Taking the Democrats who voted for Conkling, it will be seen 
that their leading motive was a sense of Senatorial reciprocity. 
One of the number said to me: "That fellow Conkling is the 
Henry Clay of the Radical party. I don't sympathize with his 
own partisans trying to assassinate him." Allen Thurman can- 
not be suspected of any evil motives, for he is a friend of Hayes. 
As the leader of the Democratic side, he would not do an unchi- 
valric thing, and the Ohio newspapers have picked at him as those 
of New York at Conkling. 

Conover, who voted against Conkling, said to me: " Conkling's 
speaking abilities have depressed his greater merits in point of 
political sagacity. He looks a long way ahead and prepares for 
occasions. He has the longest outlook of any Senator." Dorsey 
said to me: '^ Nobody will ever know the degree of Conkling's 
power in executive sessions. He has immense strength, when the 
spectators have gone, upon the minds of his peers. I saw him 
make a speech on tlie confirmation of Judge Hughes, of Virginia, 
in reply to Edmunds, that was as wonderful as anything I ever 
heard. Edmunds attacked Hughes for fighting a duel; Conkling 
had his coat on his arm and was going out; he heard his name 
mentioned by Edmunds as an upholder of dueling. Conkling 
wheeled around, put his coat and hat on a chair, and made a 
speech on dueling that was full of beauty, wisdom and learning, 
and it confirmed Hughes on the spot." 



560 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

In an executive session of the Senate, on the 
day after the rejection of Messrs. Roosevelt and 
Prince, a serious altercation occurred between 
Senator Gordon, of Georgia — then the personal 
defender of Mr. Hayes — and Senator Conkling. 
The scene may be thus briefly described: The 
clerk was reading the calendar, when Mr. Gordon 
interrupted, and made a motion concerning the 
nomination for the place of Collector of Internal 
Revenue in Georgia. Thereupon Mr. Hamlin and 
Mr. Mitchell said, " Let us go on with the calen- 
dar." Thus did these two Senators object to the 
consideration of Mr. Gordon's motion, and under 
the rules a single objection suffices to carry over 
a motion for one day. At this point Senator 
Conkling looked up from the newspaper which he 
had been reading, and without any excitement 
joined the other Senators who wished the execu- 
tive business to proceed in the regular order, and 
said, " Oh, let us go on with the calendar." There 
was nothing in the words or manner of Mr. Conk- 
linof which was calculated to offend the Senator 
from Georgia. The defeat of the Administration 
on the preceding day had annoyed Mr. Gordon. 
He failed to secure the full Democratic vote for 
the confirmation of the important New York 
nominations, and he held Senator Conkling re- 
sponsible for the defeat of his scheme. Mr, Gor- 



D ENIES MR. G ORD ON ' S IMP UTA TION. 5 6 1 

don then loudly accused the Senator from New 
York of giving orders to the Vice-President (Will- 
iam A. Wheeler). Mr. Conkling, who meanwhile 
had resumed the reading of his paper, heard his 
name mentioned, but did not understand what was 
said. Accordingly he asked Mr. Gordon to repeat 
the remark. Thereupon the Senator from Georgia, 
with a very belligerent manner, repeated his words 
as follows, "The Senator from New York is not 
in the Chair, but he is giving orders to the Chair." 
Mr. Conkling, in a deliberate and orderly man- 
ner, said in reply, "If the Senator states that I 
have ofiven orders to the Chair, the statement is 
untrue." Whereupon Mr. Gordon responded in 
the style of the ante-bellum days, ''We will settle 
this elsewhere^ Mr. Conkling, still addressing the 
Chair, answered, "We can settle it here and now, 
and in order that I may not be misunderstood, I 
repeat that if the Senator from Georgia states that 
I have given advice to the Chair, the statement is 
untrue." After the adjournment, the labors of 
Senator Gordon's friends began. They insisted 
that he had no intention of fighting a duel. Sen- 
ators Ransom and McDonald represented the 
Southern Senator, while Senators Hamlin and 
Howe became the possible "seconds" of the Re- 
publican leader. The correspondents of the press 

called upon both Mr. Gordon and Mr. Conkling, 

36 



562 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

but neither would talk for publication. The latter 
had simply denied a false statement, while the 
former, in using the word " elsewhere," had sug- 
gested a meeting the result of which might prove 
fatal. Although Mr. Conkling much preferred 
that the whole matter should take its own course, 
the wishes of warm friends could not be over- 
looked, and yielding to their requests, he suffered 
them to pursue the plan which to them seemed 
most proper. The result was a statement signed 
by the Senatorial peace-makers, which, after re- 
citing the whole incident, concluded by saying, 
* * ^' " the remarks of either (Gordon and 
Conkling) should be treated as if never uttered, 
and we are now authorized to state that the same 
are mutually and simultaneously withdrawn." 

In reply to a letter addressed to Mr. Hamlin 
asking for the secret history of this afifair, the 
biographer received the following: 

Bangor, June 5, 1889. 
A. R. Conkling, Esq. 

Dear Sir: I have your note of the third inst. I can think 
of nothing to communicate in relation to the matter of Conkling 
and Gordon beyond what is in the Cotig. Record. You can say, 
most decidedly, that the settlement of the difficulty was in every 
particular honorable to Mr. Conkling. Yours truly, 

H. Hamlin. 



1878. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

EULOGY ON SENATOR OLIVER P. MORTON MR. CONK- 
LING OPPOSES THE SILVER BILL A NOTABLE CHEM- 
ICAL PATENT SUIT. 



T 



HE chief topics discussed at the second ses- 
sion of the Forty-fifth Congress were the sil- 
ver bill and the investigation of alleged frauds in 
the election of Louisiana in 1876. 

Early in December, under a suspension of the 
rules, the silver bill was passed in the House by 
an overwhelming majority. The gist of this bill 
was that silver dollars of the weight of 412)^ 
grains Troy, of standard silver, should be coined at 
the mints of the United States, and that these 
coins shall be a legal tender, at their nominal value, 
for all debts and dues, public and private, except 
where otherwise provided by contract; and that 
any owner of silver bullion might deposit it at 
any mint or assay office, to be coined into such 
dollars for his benefit, upon the same terms and 
conditions as gold bullion is deposited for coinage 
under existing laws. 



563 



564 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

In this manner the Democratic majority in the 
lower House of Congress began its work by in- 
troducing a poHcy that was calculated to impair 
the public credit as well as to arrest the steady 
progress which the Secretary of the Treasury had 
made in the great work of refunding the public 
debt at a lower rate of interest. In a letter to a 
friend, Senator Conkling afterward spoke of this 
measure in these words : " Wild schemes of re- 
pudiation and financial chaos find encouragement 
on every hand; and in most of the States the 
Democratic party is being drawn into the whirl- 
pool of fallacious short-sighted theories." 

The silver bill was not debated in the Senate till 
after the holiday recess. 

At this session Mr. Conkling became a member 
of two select committees, viz., '* To take into con- 
sideration the state of the law respecting the as- 
certaining and declaration of the result of the 
election of the President and Vice-President of 
the United States," and " On Relations of Afifairs 
between the United States and Mexico." 

His first important speech was a eulogy upon 
the late Senator Morton, of Indiana (who died 
during the recess), January 17, 1878. He said: 

Mr. President : In ancient times those nearest the dead 
spoke in their funerals. 

Fathers celebrated the bravery and achievements of their sons; 



EULOGY OF OLIVER P. MORTON. 565 

and the graces and virtues of wives and of daughters were pub- 
licly recited and extolled by those who loved and mourned them 
most. These customs have been banished by modern civiliza- 
tion or modern manners. Now the fondest lips are sealed, and 
the ashes and the fame of the departed are no longer committed 
to those who would shield and treasure them with the tender par- 
tiality of bereaved affection. 

It is difficult to note a change so great, in a matter so deeply 
rooted in the heart of man, so hallowed and mastered by instinct 
and innate emotion, without wonder that the same beings in dif- 
ferent generations should be moved to such different manifesta- 
tions of the same sentiment and the same sorrow. 

Death is nature's supreme abhorrence. The dark valley, with 
its weird and solemn shadows, illumined by the rays of Chris- 
tianity, is still the ground which man shudders to approach. The 
grim portals and the narrow house seem in the lapse of centuries 
to have gained rather than lost in impressive and foreboding hor- 
ror. It must have been while musing over this puzzling fact that 
an illustrious American — gifted as a poet, and therefore gifted as 
a philosopher — wrote these graceful, memorable words : 

In the temple of Juno, at Elis, Sleep, and his twin brother, Death, were 
represented as children reposing in the arms of Night. On various funeral 
monuments of the ancients the Genius of Death is sculptured as a beauti- 
ful youth, leaning on an inverted torch, in the attitude of repose, his wings 
folded and his feet crossed. In such peaceful and attractive forms did the 
imagination of ancient poets and sculptors represent death. And these 
were men in whose souls the religion of Nature was like the light of stars, 
beautiful but faint and cold ! Strange that in later days this angel of God, 
which leads us with a gentle hand into the Land of the great departed, into 
the silent Land, should have been transformed into a monstrous and terrific 
thing ! Such is the spectral rider on the pale horse; such the ghastly 
skeleton with scythe and hour-glass; the Reaper whose name is Death. 

Whether owing to the tendencies here suggested, or to other 
proinptings, the usage of paying public tribute to those who have 
gone, now admits to its privilege few who stand in relations so 
close as brother Senators. When a member of the Senate, weary 
with the toil of years, worn with labors which observe no hours, 
long and harshly criticised perhaps, when the truth if known 



566 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

would have changed critics to eulogists, crowned with duties well 
done and honors well earned — when such an one, beckoned by the 
shadowy hand, retreats from the din of life, and the gates have 
closed behind him forever, it is decorous that those who are so 
soon to follow him should pause, and bear public testimony of 
the esteem in which they held him, and of the approbation which 
they know he deserved. Their utterances may not add a cubit 
or nn hour to his fame, but they strengthen and brighten the 
links of the chain which should bind men and Senators together. 

It is not my purpose to repeat the story of a career which the 
nation knows by heart. The Senate has heard, in feeling and 
graceful words, many incidents of a life devoted to the public ser- 
vice, and enduringly associated with events grand, arduous and 
historic. I rose only to add my tribute of respect and admiration 
for the genius and the services of a remarkable man, and to unite 
with the people of Indiana in the grief with which they mourn the 
death of their illustrious Senator. 

As a party leader, he was too great for any party or any State 
readily to supply his place. As an efficient, vigilant and able 
representative he had no superior in either House of Congress. 

Oppressed and crippled by bodily infirmity, his mind never 
faltered or flagged. 

Despite pain and sickness, so long as he could be carried to 
his seat he was never absent from the Senate or the Committee. 
No labor discouraged him, no contingency appalled him, no dis- 
advantage dismayed him, no defeat disheartened him. Those 
who encountered him in debate or in affairs will never forget his 
ability, his zeal, his industry, his energy, his fertility, his varied 
powers, or, above all, his indomitable heart. Living in an era of 
extraordinary activities and forces, he has left a deep and lasting 
impress on his times. 

He will go down to a far hereafter, not as one who embellish- 
ed and perpetuated his name by a studied and scholastic use of 
words, nor as a herald of resounding theories, but rather as one 
who day by day on the journey of life met actual affairs and 
realities and grappled them with a grasp too resolute and quick 
to loiter for the ornament or the advantage of protracted and 
tranquil meditation. 



OPPOSES THE ''SILVER BILL." 567 

He needs no epitaph but his name; and though brass may- 
corrode and marble molder, men will still remember Oliver 
Perry Morton as a leading and manful defender of the Republic 
in the Republic's most dire and heroic age. 

The Senate now took up for consideration the 
so-called silver bill. Its title was (H. R. 1093), 
" A bill to authorize the free coinage of the stand- 
ard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender 
character." The gist of the measure (as already 
stated) was to " remonetize " the silver dollar. 
The opponents of the bill denounced it as " a plan 
to issue a silver dollar so far below the standard 
recognized as such in the leading commercial na- 
tions of the world, and to make the laborer receive 
smaller compensation than he then obtained." 

Many amendments to this bill were offered, the 
majority of which were opposed by Mr. Conkling, 
but he voted for the amendment to increase the 
amount of silver in the dollar. 

It will be remembered that Mr. Conkling oppos- 
ed the legal-tender act of 1862. He then planted 
himself fairly on a solid-money platform, and 
from that platform, in and out of Congress, he 
never moved. While so many public men trim- 
med and faltered, Roscoe Conkling remained firm. 

On the fifteenth of February, 1878, on the call 
of Mr. Conkling the yeas and nays were taken on 
the passage of the silver bill. It was carried by a 



568 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

two-thirds vote of those present,viz., forty-eight to 
twenty-one. Senator Conklmg voted " JVo." The 
nays were chiefly from New England and the Mid- 
dle States, and fourteen of them were Republicans. 

The Senate had held this measure in committee 
and under consideration nearly three months. It 
was then returned to the House, and, some days 
later, passed with the amendments. As amended 
by the Senate it was obnoxious to the " gold " men 
and to the ultra " silver" men. The advocates of 
a gold standard of course opposed the plan to 
" remonetize " silver. 

The measure was regarded as having been much 
improved by the amendments of the Senate.* 

In the month of July, 1878, the President had 
suspended Collector Arthur and Naval Officer 
Cornell, of the city of New York, without giving 
any official reason therefor. He thus re-opened a 
controversy which Republicatis had supposed to 
be happily ended. 

This action was unfortunate, and it tended to 
renew discord at a time when earnest Republicans 
were congratulating themselves at the assurances 
of greater harmony in the party. 

The position of the President was construed in 
two ways. First: It was suspected to be a move- 

* For the full text of the bill, with amendments, and for a report of the 
long debate, the reader is referred to the Co?2!^ressiona2 Record, Forty-fifth 
Congress, second session, February, 1S7S. 



NO CLAIM FOR RE-ELECTION. 569 

ment to destroy Senator Conkling, and to annihi- 
late his pohtical influence in New York. Second: 
It was supposed to be an effort to gain control of 
the Republican organization in aid of Presidential 
aspirations. A delegation of Republican Con- 
gressmen at the preceding session of Congress had 
made a written request not to send to the Senate 
new nominations for the New York Custom- 
House, on the ground that the incumbents * were 
capable, honest, and satisfactory to the public, as 
well as to the Republican party of the State. This 
wish was thus utterly disregarded. 

Several weeks later a council of Republicans was 
held at Saratoga, where the following letter from 
Senator Conkling to Alonzo B. Cornell was read : 

Utica, August 28, 1878. 
A£y Dear Sir: I have your note saying that a number of Re- 
publicans will meet at Saratoga to-morrow to take counsel to- 
gether. This seems to me wise and timely. The Government 
is rapidly passing absolutely into the hands of those who sought 
to destroy it, not stopping till they had filled the land with woe, 
and burdened it with debt and taxes, which now rest so heavily 
upon us. This is not wise for any section. Raids on the Treas- 
ury, vast in amount, and without right or honesty, are mustering 
for the time when the solid South, dominating the Democratic 
party, as it will and must, shall again rule the two Houses of 
Congress. 

* * * * -x- * * 

Certainly the time is fit for the Republicans of New York to 
come together in earnest harmony, ignoring personal and minor 

* Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo B. Cornell. 



570 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF liOSCOE CONKLTNG. 



issues, and joining heart and liand in one high, just purpose to 
preserve the national security and honesty, and to protect human 
rights. I should like to meet you all, as you propose, but it 
seems better that I remain away. I see it charged that a claim 
to be returned to the Senate has been set up by me. You know, 
but all others may not know, how far this is from the truth. I 
know and feel that if any one has a claim on the Republican 
party I am not the man. 

The claim is altogether the other way. I have been honored 
too much and too often not to feel a deep and binding sense of 
the obligation to the party and its members, and sincere regret 
that I have been no better able to deserve and repay their confi- 
dence. No personal claim or individual interest should even 
seem to enter your conference. No man's wish or will deserves 
to be balanced for a moment against unity and success at a time 
like this. 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The State Convention met September 26, 1878. 
Previous to that time Senator ConkUng was urged 
to denounce the Greenback and Labor platforms. 
During" the preceding session of Congress he had 
voted against the silver bill ; and his political 
friends were anxious to know his views more fully. 
The Convention was very harmonious. Those 
who, in the previous year at Rochester, had opposed 
the Senator, now remained silent, and one of his 
prominent adversaries actually applauded his re- 
marks. A judge of the Court of Appeals was to 
be named, and George F. Danforth, of Monroe 
County, became the candidate. He was afterward 
elected. 

The platform, in unequivocal terms, declared for 



A NICKEL-PLA TING PA TENT SUIT. 5 7 I 

hard money, and the Electoral Commission was 
also thoroughly approved. Senator Conkling was 
chosen president of the Convention, and his speech 
was well received. When a reference to President 
Lincoln was made it provoked applause. There- 
upon Mr. Conkling dropped the thread of his dis- 
course and with touching pathos said: "I trust 
that the name of Lincoln will never be mentioned 
in a Republican assemblage without calling forth 
evidences of sympathy and respect." As an ex- 
pression of his opinions, this speech is so important 
that a full report would be desirable, but it is too 
long to print. He selected, as a sort of a text, the 
following: " Let the Republican Party be Now and 
Always the Champion of Right and Courage— 
never the Victim of Error and Fear." 

The next case of public interest that Mr. Conk- 
hng argued in court was one about a patent for 
nickel-plating. The particulars have been furnished 
by Messrs. Frost & Coe, who were the solicitors. 

Nickel-plating is based on the same general principle as gold, 
silver and other kinds of electro-plating, namely, that a solution 
of the metal of which a deposit is desired is capable of being so 
decomposed by an electric current as to separate the metal from 
the solution and deposit it on the article to be coated. 

At the time of the Adams invention, concerning which the 
suits were brought, nickel-plating was referred to in the books 
on electro-chemistry as capable of being carried on with various 
solutions, and patents had been granted for solutions and different 
ways and methods of using them. 



572 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Dr. Adams, a patentee, claimed to have discovered that in the 
preparation of nickel or of the solutions minute quantities of cer- 
tain substances injurious to the deposits, and fatal to success, 
had been allowed to enter, and his remedy was so to prepare the 
nickel and the solutions as to eliminate these harmful substances, 
and so prevent their alleged ill effects. These substances were 
soda, alumina, lime and nitric acid. 

It was further claimed, on behalf of the patentee, that it was 
only by observing his conditions and precautions that nickel-plat- 
ing could be carried on commercially, and that, as he was the first 
to make it a practical success he was entitled to be considered 
the founder of the art. 

Litigation on the patent began soon after its issue. Two suits 
in Massachusetts were decided in its favor, and then, about the year 
1 873, the New York test suit was commenced against Harris & Wes- 
ton. Mr. Weston's position, in which he was sustained by Profes- 
sors Doremus and Seelye, was that the theory of the patent was 
unsound and untenable; that he prepared and used his solutions 
in nickel-plating in accordance with well-known methods laid 
down in the books without paying any attention to the Adams 
directions and precautions. The case came to argument in the 
spring of 1878 before Judge Blatchford. It was held by him 
under advisement nearly six months. In the fall he decided 
against the defendants in a carefully written and elaborate opin- 
ion. Injunctions on the strength of his decree were at once 
granted against a number of prominent concerns in New York. 

It was at this time that Senator Conkling was called into the 
case. Under the form of a motion to vacate these injunctions, he 
asked virtually from Judge Blatchford a favorable reconsideration 
of the Harris case, which he had recently decided. 

He had only about ten days in which to familiarize himself 
with the suit. In order to illustrate and enforce the positions of 
the defence, Professor Doremus instituted a series of experiments 
in his laboratory. 

During this time Mr. Conkling watched carefully the course 
of these experiments, and in addition had long consultations with 
Messrs. Frost & Coe, Mr. Weston, and the other gentlemen con- 
nected with the defence. The remainder of the time he devoted 



APPEARS AGAINST MR. DICKERSON. 573 

to his own examinations of the patent and the evidence, going 
where he could see the work actually done, as well as making ex- 
periments for himself, and acquiring chemical knowledge with his 
usual rapidity and success. 

The original case had been prepared with great care. It had 
been presented to Judge Blatchford by the late Charles F. Blake, 
a patent lawyer of great eminence, in connection with the firm of 
Frost & Coe, and had been decided by Judge Blatchford after 
most careful and prolonged consideration. It is safe to say that 
no other man but Mr. Conkling could have induced this Judge to 
accord a patient rehearing in the matter. That he was not only 
able to induce Judge Blatchford to listen most attentively to his 
argument, but also to take the papers and again carefully review 
the case, in opposition to Edward N, Dickerson — who then stood 
foremost among Patent lawyers, and had the advantage of years 
of familiarity with the subject — is quite remarkable. 

Judge Blatchford's final decision was adverse to the defence, 
but this was due to no fault of Mr. Conkling. He had so ac- 
quired the facts of the case, that everything that could be said 
for the defence was said, and said in his own inimitable way. To 
prove his points, he brought so much apparatus into court that it 
seemed like a laboratory. It was a source of regret to him and 
to many others that the case could not have been appealed to the 
Supreme Court. After this second decision of Judge Blatchford, 
those interested in the patent presented such favorable terms of 
settlement to those interested in the defence, that undoubtedly it 
was judicious, for business reasons, to accept them. These terms, 
we thoroughly believe, would not have been offered unless Mr. 
Conkling had made out such a good case for the defence. 



January, 1879 — June, 1880. 
CHAPTER XXX. 

AN UNUSUAL HONOR THE FIRST REPUBLICAN TO BE 

THRICE ELECTED TO THE SENATE SALUTED BY NE- 
GROES THE UTICA CONVENTION OF FEBRUARY, 1880. 

TT was incumbent upon the Legislature of 1879 
to elect a United States Senator. There was 
a decided RepubUcan majority, and Mr. ConkHng 
was again nominated by acclamation for a third 
consecutive term. On Tuesday, January 21, the 
election took place. In the Senate twenty votes 
were given for Roscoe Conkling and twelve for the 
Hon. William Dorsheimer ; and in the Assembly, 
ninety-five for Mr. Conkling, twenty -three for 
Lieutenant - Governor Dorsheimer, and two for 
Peter Cooper, " Greenbacker." The joint session 
for a comparison of the votes took place the next 
day, and the nominations having been found to 
agree, the presiding officer announced that Roscoe 
Conkling had been chosen Senator for the term 
of six years from the fourth day of March next. 

Even the leading Democratic journals approved 
of this result. By no class of our population, 



FIRING A GUN FOR EACH VOTE. 575 

however, was Mr. Conkling's re-election received 
with greater enthusiasm than by the colored citi- 
zens. The following telegram received by him 
at Washington is expressive of their sentiments: 

New York, January 21, 1879. 
Hon, RoscoE Conkling, 

U. S. Senate, Washington, D. C. 
The colored Republicans of New York have just commenced 
firing 115 guns in Washington Square. Two hundred colored 
veteran soldiers are present in uniform, with martial music, to- 
gether with an immense concourse of people. 

T. L. James. 

On the same occasion Mr. Conkling received 
from a colored man the following letter : 

New York, January 20, 1879. 

My Dear Sir: A goodly number of your colored friends 
and admirers in this city, mindful of the invaluable services 
experienced by them at your hands, and desirous, in a slight 
degree at least, of expressing their appreciation thereof, propose' 
to-morrow evening, January 21, firing a gun for each vote cast 
in the Legislature at Albany for your re-election to the United 
States Senate. They also most respectfully and cordially tender 
you their congratulations on the occasion, trusting that your 
career may be as brilliant and useful in the future as it has been 
in the past. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

David F. Nelson. 

The Hon. Roscoe Conkling, 
Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C. 

THE REPLY. 
United States Senate Chamber, ) 
Washington, January 25, 1879. ' 
My Dear Sir: I had the pleasure to receive your valued 
letter telling me of the action of a large body of brave colored 
citizens and soldiers of New York, signifying their good-will to me. 



576 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

In all the great and undeserved honor which the Republicans 
of New York have bestowed on me, there have been few incidents 
so gratifying as the gathering of so many brave colored citizens 
to attest their confidence in me. 

Their meaning is well understood. They believe, and they 
are not mistaken, that I appreciate and feel the claims of their 
race, and the manly service it rendered in the country's most dire 
need. They believe that the wrongs which have been endured by 
colored men on this continent in the distant, and also in the 
recent past, deserve to be remembered, and that such wrongs 
should be made to disappear. They believe that a man's rights 
before God and man cannot justly depend on the color of his skin. 

All this I believe, and I hope yet to be able to aid in estab- 
lishing justice and fair play for all men under America's flag. 

Tell them so, and accept my thanks at the same time that you 
bear them to others. Yours truly, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

Mr. David F. Nelson, 12 W. 12th St., New York City. 

Mr. Conkling's letter of thanks was read the 
following Sunday in all the colored churches of 
the city of New York.'^* 

A Republican journal had been established at 
Utica, in the autumn of 1877, by the friends of 

* The following account of David F. Nelson by his former 
commanding officer may interest the reader. He is now a clerk 
in the New York Post-office. When, in 1885, Mr. Conkling re- 
turned from Europe, he brought him a present. 

This is to certify that the first time I ever saw David F. Nelson (col- 
ored boy) was on the shore of the Neuse River, in North Carolina, about 
twenty miles below the city of Newbern, the day before the battle of New- 
bern. Though scarcely nine years of age, he brought information as to 
the location of the enemy, and while I almost discredited his statements, 
the information was found to be correct. 

He had been a slave, and had been living a few miles out from the 
city with his mistress, from whom he ran away two days before the battle. 



LETTER CONCERNING MR. LAWRENCE. 577 

Mr. Conkling-. In February, 1879, it was discon- 
tinued. Mr. Lewis Lawrence was its proprietor. 
Mr. Conklingr's appreciation of him was deserved- 
ly high, as will appear from the following letter, 
which was written soon after his death: 

2 Wall Street, New York, January 7, 1887. 

My Dear Sir: Very welcome is your invitation to say a few 
words of our long-valued friend, Mr. Lawrence. 

In all the years while I knew and felt his goodness and his 
kindness, one marked trait stood out in his gentle yet robust and 
manly character. This was the bravery of his belief — the ad- 
herence in action at whatever peril, against whatever odds, to 
whatever his reason wrought out. Clamor, fashion, pretension, 
heartless expediency — none of these, however formulated or 
solemnized, could gain an hour's mastery over him, even if he 
stood alone. 

For example, he believed that one man could not rightfully 
own another man. He rejected such a dogma, although he saw 
it embalmed in constitutions, in statutes, in decisions of courts, 
and in the all but universal acquiescence of his countrymen. 

When this was true he was a young man — poor, busy, strug- 
gling, and much dependent for success upon the approbation of 
others. The generation in which he thus stood was conserva- 

He was taken by me, at his request, from the shore to the United 
States gunboat Chasseur, and received on board as a contraband, where he 
acted as officers' mess-boy; and for faithfulness and intelligence was pro- 
moted and stationed at one division of great guns, as powder-boy. He 
was afterward transferred to the United States gunboat Ranger, under my 
charge, and on several occasions, while on board the latter vessel, at- 
tracted the attention of General A. E. Burnside and other officers, by his 
unusual smartness and ingenuity. David, as he was called, was always 
obedient and strictly honest, and was a general favorite with all who 
knew him. 

[Signed] Valentine H. Voorhees, 

Second Lieut. Thirteenth N. Y. H. Artillery. 
New York, September 9, 1865. 
37 



5/8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

lively vengeful against agitation — especially against anti-slavery 
agitation. Policy, ease, advantage, were all on one side — the side 
of anger and denunciation against Abolitionists. This made no 
difference with the conviction or the action of Lewis Lawrence. 
No shadow of turning came from what men nowadays call " pres- 
sure." Under the strain of a hazardous business, to which he de- 
voted hours which most men give to rest, he turned aside, never 
without peril, whenever a fleeing slave cpuld be helped to Canada, 
or secreted from his pursuers. Well knowing the risks he ran, 
he faced them all with a determination which never faltered for a 
moment, and with a hand ever open to charity till its pulses ceased 
to beat. 

So, he believed strong drink the foe of man. Expediency, 
usage, neighborly appeals, smooth terms with others — all again 
stood on one side, asking him only to say, " I am not my broth- 
er's keeper. " But against every persuasion, either of blandish- 
ment or displeasure, he set his face like flint, making no apology 
or excuse in any presence for the stand he took. Again, he 
would hear hue and cry raised against some one he knew or had 
cause to esteem. Numbers would join in the buffeting, or by 
half-hearted paltering would help it on. An innate sense of 
justice and of reason seemed to keep him steadfast to his own 
belief, unswayed by the din which confused or silenced most of 
those around him. I do not believe that the mere fact that any 
man or woman was set upon and denounced ever of itself cost 
that man or woman the friendship of Mr. Lawrence. To me 
there was a volume of nobility in this one manifestation of his 
nature. He excelled not in the easy excellence of things said, 
but in the arduous excellence of things done. 

His whole business life was a campaign of pluck, perseverance 
and principle. Absolute in his methods of business, he was ex- 
acting of himself. In his theory and practice authority went 
with responsibility. If he was to become responsible for creat- 
ing a railroad, he insisted upon full sway in the province allotted 
him; and the skill, the foresight, the wisdom, the full completeness 
which his work revealed, ever vindicated his resolute self-reliance. 

To extol his benevolence, his respect for the rights of others, 
his sympathy for the sufferings of others, his never-sleeping 



LETTER FROM MR. SEYMOUR. 579 

generosity, his good works, his cheerful, genial presence, his 
reverence for the truth, the blamelessness of his life, could be 
appropriate only with those who did not know him. It is enough 
to say that, when the volume of my life is closed, could I hope as 
little will be found which friendship would efface as his acts have 
recorded, it would be both a solace and a triumph. 

Indebted to him for countless words and deeds of kindness, I 
can never cease to hold him in grateful and honoring memory. 

Sincerely yours, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The Reverend Dr. Brown, Utica, N. Y. 

Congress had expired March 4, 1879. The 
necessary appropriations for the army had not 
been made, and the President called an extra ses- 
sion for that purpose. Partisan feeHng- ran high, 
and the debates upon the various questions were 
warm and animated. Ex-Governor Seymour, from 
his home at Utica, took the occasion to address him 
a letter conveying a friendly caution, as follows: 

Utica, April 22, 1879. 
My Dear Sir: I have no right to give you advice about politi- 
cal affairs, but sometimes the lookers-on can see more clearly than 
those who are in the midst of the fight. The late debates in Con- 
gress on grave questions have run too much into personal wrangles. 
The local air of Washington misleads members as to the general 
feeling of the country. Ultra men excite some attention, and 
partisan journals are apt to laud violent speeches; but when the 
time comes to select leaders, extreme men are set aside for those 
who are more moderate and thoughtful. I think a Republican 
who would set forth his opinions in a firm, moderate way, and 
who would concede all the difficulties, social, industrial and politi- 
cal, which embarrass the people of the South, would make his 
mark. There is an opening for a large-minded, statesman-like 



580 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING, 

speech which will rise above the object of making the people of 
one section of our country hate those who live in other parts of it. 
The Stalwart men of brains in the Senate and House are over- 
doing the thing. I am, truly yours, 

Horatio Seymour. 

Hon. R. CONKLING. 

Two days later, April 24, when the bill to make 
appropriations for the support of the army was 
under consideration in the Senate, Mr. Conkling 
delivered one of his characteristic speeches. It 
was a thorough review of the pending condition 
of affairs. Three hundred thousand pamphlet 
copies were printed, and the Hon. Thomas V. 
Cooper, of Pennsylvania, reprinted it entire (to- 
gether with the address nominating General Grant 
at Chicago in 1880) in his work entitled American 
Politics. Excerpts from this speech are found in 
Chapter XXI. The following despatch in regard 
to the speech appeared in the Evening Post of 
April 25, and was written by Mr. Henry R. Elliott, 
the correspondent of that journal : 

Washington, April 24, 1879. 
Mr. Conkling closed his remarkable speech this afternoon by 
saying that as the session had been convened by a Democratic 
causus for the purpose of making political speeches, he too had 
made one. It might be said, perhaps, that in reality he made 
four, for his three hours were consumed in the consideration of 
four distinct and separate topics. The first speech was an analy- 
sis of the Democratic caucus programme, and, as a caustic and 
effective review of that plan, ranked with Garfield's exposition of 
the same design at the opening of the debate in the House of 



CHA RA CTERIS TIC SPEECH IN SENA TE. 5 8 1 

Representatives. The second speech was a legal discussion of 
the merits of the political sections of the two appropriation bills. 
As this was the only one of the four that was strictly germane to 
the subject before the Senate, so it was the only one of all that 
was marked by mediocrity in the speaker or listened to with any- 
thing that approached inattention by the vast and brilliant as- 
semblage. The third speech was in behalf of the renomination 
of President Grant, and it is needless to say that this oration was 
distinguished by all the graces and political acuteness of which 
the Senator is capable. In emphasis of this nomination, by the 
rhetorical device of contrast, the fourth and last speech was a 
bitter denunciation and criticism of what is known as " the policy 
of conciliation." He dwelt with great severity upon its past, pres- 
ent and future, declaring that it had its origin in mawkish senti- 
mentality; that it had already resulted in a restoration of the 
Southern secession element to a domination in Congress, and that 
if not rebuked it would eventuate in all the horrid calamities 
which political orators from time out of mind have prophesied to 
their beloved land if the opposite party should succeed. 

As a specimen of forensic oratory, there is and can be but one 
opinion. It is the only talk of the town to-night, and however 
bitterly many of its features may be attacked — and at times the 
speech was cruelly unfair — friends and foes vie in adjectives of 
praise. Some parts were indeed noble, and even the misrepre- 
sentations and abuse were on a grand scale. It would be difficult 
to find in all the literature of spite more scathing sarcasm or more 
eloquent perversion than marked his references to a policy of 
generosity and friendship to the South. 

Apart from the main merits of the speech, many very charac- 
teristic incidents occurred to give it interest. His charm of voice 
and manner, the play of feature and graceful and significant ac- 
tion, his artistic use of the adjacent furniture and his neighbors 
as part of his gestures, his supercilious snubbing of Ben Hill, the 
inevitable affectionate by-play with Eaton, the contemptuous fling 
at Hereford, the suave vivisection of ponderous Senator Davis 
and his "soothing-sirup" speech, the theatrical tearing up of 
each sheet of notes as he proceeded, the insolent sneer at the 
presiding officer, Mr. Thurman, whom he was " glad to see in his 



582 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

seat," the fresh quotations happily introduced, and the old quo- 
tations brought in or just suggested with rhetorical art, the origi- 
nal and picturesque phrases which seemed to invest old and com- 
mon thoughts with renewed vitality — a stream of such incidents 
were like a delicate sauce added to viands that seemed perfect 
without them. H, R. E. 

The Republican State Convention met at Sara- 
toga Springs, September 3, 1879. As Senator 
Conkling entered the hall he was greeted with 
loud acclamations. The Hon. E. M. Madden, State 
Senator, moved that he should be chosen tempo- 
rary president of the Convention. A unanimous 
vote ratified the motion. Mr. Conkling taking 
the chair, delivered a forcible and cutting address 
upon the condition of political affairs. 

After the permanent organization, the Conven- 
tion selected Alonzo B. Cornell as candidate for 
Governor. On motion of Mr. Conkling, the Hon. 
Hamilton Ward was nominated for Attorney-Gen- 
eral. When the complete State ticket had been 
made, a platform expressive of the views which Mr. 
Conkling had avowed, was reported and adopted. 

Mr. Conkling's friendship for our colored citi- 
zens was always remembered and heartily recipro- 
cated. About three weeks after the Convention 
at Saratoga, he received the following letter from 
the colored Senator, the Hon. B. K. Bruce, of Mis- 
sissippi, gratefully acknowledging his courtesy 
and consistent deportment: 



SENATOR B. K. BRUCE' S LETTER. 583 

United States Senate Chamber, | 
Washington, September 21, 1879. f 

My Dear Sir: When I came to Washington, four years ago, to 
take my seat in the Senate, I was an utter stranger not only to 
the members of that body, but to the duties devolving upon me 
in such a station. I was hopeful of no more than the assurance 
from the general body of its membership that the novelty of the 
event would embarrass them less than myself. A radical change 
in our politics had just occurred; the protection of the freedman 
at the South had become unpopular at the North; the press, po- 
tent for good or evil, had turned its batteries against us, and those 
who dared to stand firm for the right were denounced as " Ma- 
chine politicians." The effect upon some members of the Senate 
was so marked that when I was called to be sworn in, my col- 
league, Mr. Alcorn, a man who owed his seat in the Senate largely 
to my efforts, took refuge behind a newspaper, to avoid extending 
to me the courtesy usual upon such occasions. It was at this 
point that the grasp of your hand — the first token of friendship 
that I had received — and your warm words of welcome made me 
feel and know that in that august body I had a friend. No one 
who has not undergone a similar ordeal can understand and ap- 
preciate my feelings on that occasion. 

Since then I have learned to know you, not only as the fore- 
most man in American politics, but as the mo£t practical, saga- 
cious, truest friend of those who lately wore chains. 

Mrs. Bruce and I, in giving our first-born, a boy, your name, 
have entertained but one fear — that he may fall short of honoring 
the great name he bears. We are made happy by the evidence 
of your consent and your pleasure in our choice, by the reception 
of your beautiful and valued gift as a token of it. On behalf of 
the baby and Mrs. Bruce I here wish to convey to you, as far as 
these means permit, our gratitude and thanks. Absence from 
home has prevented an earlier acknowledgment. I am 

Very truly yours, 

B. K. Bruce. 

Hon. RoscoE Conkling, 

Utica, N. Y. 



584 v^//^£" AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Senator Conkling's next appearance in public 
was before the Supreme Court of the United 
States at Washington, November 11 and 12, in the 
case of the State of South CaroHna ex. rel. Doug- 
lass and Jackson, plaintiffs in error vs. P. C. Gail- 
lard, County Treasurer, &c. 

This was a writ of error to the Supreme Court 
of the State of South Carolina, to reverse a decis- 
ion of the latter court A^nym^^i mandamus prayed 
for by the plaintiff in error in the court below. 

The object of the mandamus prayed for was to 
compel the County Treasurer to receive, on ac- 
count of taxes due the State of South Carolina, 
certain bills issued by the " Bank of the State of 
South Carolina," which, by the terms of its char- 
ter, were made " receivable at the Treasury of the 
State and by all tax-collectors and other public 
officers in all payments for taxes or other moneys 
due to the State." 

By an act of December 24, 1878, the State had 
prescribed certain methods of establishing the 
validity and genuineness of the bills, but requir- 
ing the tax-payer, in the first instance, to pay his 
taxes in money, and giving him leave afterward 
to bring an action against the County Treasurer 
for the recovery of the money so paid. 

This latter act was regarded by the plaintiffs in 
error as a direct impairment of the contract con- 



CHOSEN TO REPRESENT ONEIDA. 585 

tained in the bank charter. Other questions arose, 
but were incidental rather than essential, and Mr. 
Conkling's argument was directed almost exclu- 
sively to a demonstration of the inconsistency of 
the act of December 24, 1878, with the original 
contract of the bank charter. His argument was 
exceedingly acute and vigorous, abounding in 
expressive phrases, and holding the unbroken at- 
tention of the judges. 

The court was equally divided in opinion, eight 
justices only being present. 

The Hon. Daniel H. Chamberlain was the as- 
sociate counsel of Mr. Conkling in this case, and 
he kindly furnished the biographer with the above 
statement. 

Mr. Conkling's attention, however, was speedily 
called away from legal matters to the more exact- 
ing requirements of politics. The Republican Na- 
tional Convention was impending, and the time 
had come for preliminary measures. He received 
a letter from a trusty friend, announcing that a 
most determined effort was in progress to secure 
anti- Grant delegates from the Oneida district 
to the State Convention, and asking his advice. 
There was a sharp conflict, but Mr. Conkling's 
friends were triumphant ; and he was elected a 
delegate to the Convention, which was about to 
assemble. 



586 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

To the letter announcing this result, he made the 
following reply: 

Senate Chamber, ) 

Washington, February 19, 1880. ) 
My Dear Sir: — Your letters, with others in this morning's mail, 
give me my first information that I have been honored by an 
election to the State Convention. You seem to have had an ugly 
contest, which I deeply regret. I doubt if it will be wise for me 
to attend the Convention — indeed, I think it better not. 

I take it the Convention will reflect the views of its constitu- 
ency, and if so it will be for General Grant overwhelmingly. 

Cordially yours, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

The Hon. C. M. Dennison, Utica, N. Y. 

The movement to nominate General Grant once 
more for President, had now taken definite form. 
Mr. Conkling was devoting all his energy to its 
promotion. With him were associated Senators 
John A. Logan and J. Donald Cameron. They 
were opposed, with equal effort, by the friends of 
opposing candidates. The first redoubt to be 
carried was the delegation from the State of New 
York, and to that end every party directed its 
energies. 

The Republican Convention for the selection of 
delegates was held at Utica, February 25, 1880. 
The friends of Mr. Conkling were in the majority, 
and he was chosen to represent the State at large. 
The delegates were selected, and a test resolution 
was offered that they should not be pledged to 



EULOGY ON GENERAL GRANT. 587 

the support of any candidate. After a warm de- 
bate this was voted down— i8o ayes to 217 noes. 
Resolutions were then adopted, instructing the 
deleo-ates to use their utmost and united efforts to 
secure the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant. In his 
remarks upon this question, Mr. Conkling uttered 
this glowing eulogy : 

I believe that if there be one man, the lustre and glory of 
whose name, the power of whose position, commands the confi- 
dence, not only of white men, but of those who were painted black 
by Nature's brush, and who had the loyalty and faith to cling to 
the flag in the dark hours, work for it, fight for it and pray for it 
_if there be any one man on this footstool whom the whites and 
blacks cherish in their hearts, that man is General Grant. 

At first Mr. Conkling was under the impression 
that it would be injudicious for him to attend the 
National Convention. He came presently to an- 
other conclusion and headed the delegation. 



i88o. 
CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE CHICAGO CONVENTION. 

A T the Republican National Convention in 
June, 1880, Senator Conkling was the central 
figure. He was the spokesman of the delegation 
from New York. They had been instructed, by 
a decisive vote at the time of their appointment, 
to support General Grant for the Presidential 
nomination. This was the last political conven- 
tion which Mr. Conkling ever attended, and the 
only one for many years to which he had been a 
delegate and in which he had been defeated. 
The author copies from the official proceedings 
the substance of his remarks at the Convention. 
Owing to the occasional noise and confusion, the 
report may not always be verbally exact. 

FIRST DAY, JUNE 2. 

The temporary chairman of the Convention 

was the Hon. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts. 

The roll of States and Territories had been called. 

Mr. Frye, of Maine, remarked that the name of 

Utah had been omitted, and moved that it be 

588 



REP UBLICA N NA TJONA L CON VEN TION. 589 

called, to which Mr. Conkling objected. Mr. 
Conkling submitted the point that the National 
Committee had made up the roll, and it was not 
in order to move that Utah, Louisiana, or any 
other State or Territory should be placed on it. 

The Chair overruled the point of order, and after 
further remark declared the question to be upon 
the adoption of the resolution. 

On motion of the Hon. R. C. McCormick it was 
ordered to call the roll for the presentation of cre- 
dentials and for contests. When the name of Utah 
was reached. Senator Conkling presented the pro- 
test and other papers of the contesting delegation. 

SECOND DAY, JUNE 3. 

Upon reassembling, Mr. Conkling inquired 
whether the Committee on Credentials was ready 
to report. The Chair replied that the report would 
not be ready till four o'clock. After some remarks, 
Mr. Conkling moved to take a recess till six that 
evening. 

Eugene Hale, of Maine, opposed the motion, 
declaring that the Convention was ready to go on 
with its business. 

Mr. Conkling's reply was introduced by his in- 
imitable irony: 

The only work we shall do between now and four or five 
o'clock is to sit here idle on uncushioned seats — fortunately with 
backs— whilst a vast number of other persons sit in the galleries 



5 go LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

on benches without cushions or backs; and the whole question is 
whether we shall pass the time here in waiting, or let everybody 
take care of himself. Mr. Chairman, it is an open secret, and I 
allude to it because the gentleman from Maine has done so. He 
says the report of the Committee on Permanent Organization is an 
uncontested report. It is an open secret that the present organ- 
ization is to be continued. Although the honorable presiding 
officer comes from the same portion of country which gives us 
the gentleman from Maine — a region peopled chiefly by orators 
[laughter] — I hardly believe that our Chairman will feel bound to 
indulge the Convention in a second presiding speech. Therefore, 
could the honorable gentleman have a report from the Committee 
on Permanent Organization, and have action upon it forthwith — 
to which I have no objection— he would have a proceeding which, 
whenever it occurs, will not occupy ten minutes of the time of the 
Convention; and when that proceeding has occurred we shall 
have come to the confines of present progress. * * * 

When Mr. Conkling had concluded, Mr. Hale 
spoke in opposition; after which the motion was 
put and lost. The Committee on Permanent Or- 
ganization submitted their report which was 
adopted. 

Mr. Frye then moved to take a recess till five 
o'clock. Mr. Conkling, unwilling to let such an 
opportunity drop, made a humorous acknowledg- 
ment. 

I have not the heart, I say, to part with the society of my 
honorable friends until five o'clock — until after 1 have congratu- 
lated them on this happy issue out of all our afflictions. It is a 
matter which must stir the patriotism and gratitude of every dele- 
gate, that this Convention, in its unorganized state, sublimely ris- 
ing in its might and grandeur, has been able to achieve the mo- 
mentous, the critical, the portentous results which have been as- 
sured since my motion for a recess was made. 



HIS FIRS T RE SOL U TION. 5 9 1 

The Convention adjourned until 5:30 p. m. 

Upon reassembling, it was moved that the 
Committee on Rules should report immediately. 
George H. Sharpe offered a substitute, directing 
the Committee on Credentials in place of the 
Committee on Rules to report. Mr. Conkling 
spoke in favor of the substitute. 

The roll of States was then called. New York's 
vote was forty-seven yeas to twenty-three nays; 
and the total vote was — yeas 318, nays 406. So 
the substitute was not agreed to. 

THIRD DAY, JUNE 5. 

As to pledging support to the candidate nom- 
inated, Mr. Conkling offered the following reso- 
lution: 

Resolved, As the sense of this Convention, that every member 
of it is bound in honor to support its nominee, whoever that nomi- 
nee may be; and that no man should hold a seat here who is not 
ready so to agree. 

After a brief discussion the President put the 
question, and ruled, " The ayes have it." 

Mr. Brandegee (of Connecticut) : I doubt it, and move that 
the roll of States be called. 

Mr. Conkling then said : 

Plainly and audibly, to me and to others, negative votes were 
given on this resolution, and I respectfully ask the Chair to call 
the States, that we may know who it is in a Republican Convention 
that votes " No " on such a pledge. 



592 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The roll of States was then called, and the re- 
sult was : Yeas, 716 ; Nays, 3. The negative votes 
were cast by West Virginia. Senator Conkling 
then addressed the Chair as follows : 

Mr. President, I wish to offer a resolution, which in one mo- 
ment I will reduce to writing, the substance of which meanwhile 
I will submit orally to the Convention. 

The resolution was as follows : 

Resolved, That the delegates who have voted that they will 
not abide the action of the Convention, do not deserve and have 
forfeited their votes in this Convention. 

Mr. Campbell, of West Virginia, then rose and 
protested against the adoption of the resolution. 
He was followed in the same strain by others. 
Among these was Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, who in- 
sisted that the trio from West Virginia should be 
allowed to vote according to their wishes. Sena- 
tor Conkling wrote on a newspaper, " I congratu- 
late you as being the ' dark horse,' " and when Gen- 
eral Garfield resumed his seat, he turned to dele- 
gate John D. Lawson, of the city of New York, 
and tearing off the written piece of newspaper 
said, " Please hand this to Mr. Garfield." 

Mr. Conkling foresaw the result. He also inter- 
preted the ulterior meaning of the speech of Mr. 
Garfield nominating Secretary Sherman. 

Mr. Pixley, of California, then moved that Mr. 
Conkling's resolution be laid upon the table. 



HIS RESOLUTION WITHDRAWN. 



59: 



Mr. Conkling" thereupon said 



Mr, President, to make an inquiry of the Chair, which, al- 
though this motion is not debatable, is in order, I beg to in- 
quire of the Chair, there being no difference of understanding 
around me, whether the delegates referred to in that resolution 
did state that they would support the nominee of the Convention. 
The Chair, no doubt, heard what the gentlemen said. 

The president dechned to construe " the speeches 
or addresses" of delegates. 
The Senator then said : 

One word further. If I had, or could have, an affirmative 
answer to the question I put to the Chair, it would give me great 
pleasure to withdraw this resolution. I think in some way the 
Chair might enable us to know whether those are right who did 
not understand these delegates to say that they would support our 
nominee, or the gentleman from Ohio is right. 

The president ordered the roll to be called, when 
Mr. Conkling, interrupting, said : 

If I am in order — and I believe I am, owing to the purpose for 
which I rise — I will not insist upon any resolution against even a 
doubt as to the position of the three members from West Virginia, 
and although I did not understand the declaration as another 
member did, rather than run the risk of an injustice to any dele- 
gate, / ivill withdraw the resolution. 

Mr. Campbell immediately retorted : " In the 
language of the gentleman from New York, I con- 
gratulate him upon his success." 

Referring to an explanation by Mr. Conger, of 

Michigan, concerning a slight change of delegates, 

Mr. Conkling said : 
38 



594 



LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 



Understanding that sufficiently, as I believe I do, I beg to ask 
the president of the Convention or the chairman of the Commit- 
tee to state to us, as can be done in a moment, what are the topics 
that will fall within the description of undisputed points of the re- 
port. Let us hear them enumerated once. I ask for a mere 
enumeration. 

This request was complied with. The report 
upon contested delegations was taken up. When 
the State of Alabama was reached Benjamin Har- 
rison, of Indiana, took an active part. He also 
moved that *' one hour be allotted to the considera- 
tion of this question of the contest from the State 
of Alabama." 

Mr. Conkling (of New York) : Mr. President, I shall vote with 
great pleasure for a resolution that will enable us at the earliest 
moment to proceed to and finish the real business of the Conven- 
tion, and I agree to all that has been said by the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. Harrison]. I ask his attention, and I ask him to 
agree with me in a word I wish to say about his resolution. The 
gentleman from Indiana, and the whole Convention, will see that 
a resolution, in the terms proposed, will not accomplish the pur- 
pose that its mover has in view, because he wants, as we all want, 
a fair opportunity given to both sides. The honorable gentleman 
will see that if we limit debate to half an hour, if I obtain the 
floor, or if my honorable friend obtains the floor, either of us 
may occupy the entire time. Therefore, Mr. President, I venture 
to suggest that the gentleman from Indiana prescribe so much 
time for one side and so much time for the other, and let the time 
be equal. 

Mr. Harrison: The suggestion of the distinguished gentle- 
man from New York [Mr. Conkling] meets my entire approval. 
I was simply- providing a limit of time for the whole discussion, 
and I thought that would, of course, be equally divided by the 
sides that were to discuss it. 



CONKLING AND GENERAL HARRISON. 595 

Mr. Conkling: That would be very uncertain. If my honorable 
friend will hear me a moment, I know, and he knows better than I — 

Mr. Harrison [interrupting]: He knows nothing better than 
the gentleman from New York. 

Mr. Cofikling: Oh yes, Mr. President. Whenever my honor- 
able friend from Indiana or I speak we have two reasons for con- 
tinuing. In the first place, we like to listen to a sensible man. 
[Laughter.] In the next place, we are not aware, as we speak, how 
rapidly time may fly; and some member of the Convention, with 
the utmost fairness of disposition, having the floor, may speak 
much longer than he is aware of, and thus abridge the right of 
the other side. I ask the gentleman from Indiana so to modify his 
resolution as to prescribe a certain number of minutes, and I 
suggest to him, say twenty minutes a side — or thirty minutes. 

Mr. Harrison : I accept the suggestion of the gentleman from 
New York, and with the consent of my seconder, will so modify 
the motion as that forty minutes shall be allotted for the con- 
sideration of this question, which shall be divided — twenty min- 
utes to the contestants and twenty minutes to the sitting delegates. 
* * * * •* -jf- * 

Mr. Conkling : I ask the gentleman [Mr. Turner, of Alabama] 
to yield to me an instant only. It is suggested by gentlemen 
around me that, although forty minutes may be enough in the 
Alabama case, the gentlemen interested in other cases — for ex- 
ample, the Illinois case — may want a longer or a shorter time, 
and therefore I feel at liberty, as one member of the Convention, 
to assume that this will not be taken as a precedent for the pre- 
cise number of moments which may be asked for in another case. 

The cases of Alabama and Illinois were then 
discussed, and the majority report was in sub- 
stance adopted. 

FOURTH DAY, JUNE 6. 

In reference to the admission of delegates from 
Utah Territory, Mr. Blake, of Montana, said : 



596 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

There is no Republican party in Utah. There is no Demo- 
cratic party in Utah. Whenever an election has been held, lines 
are always drawn between the Mormons on one side and the Gen- 
tiles, or non-Mormons, on the other 

Mr. Conkling then created much laughter by 
asking the question, " Are these the Mormons 
or the Gentiles ?" 

The platform was next read. After some discus- 
sion the resolutions, with a modified civil service 
amendment, were adopted. The Convention then 
took a recess, assembling again at seven o'clock. 

Nominations for President were now declared to 
be in order. The secretary called the roll of States. 

Mr. Joy, of Michigan, nominated James G. 
Blaine. He was seconded by Messrs. Pixley, of 
California, and Frye, of Maine. 

Mr. Drake, of Minnesota, nominated William 

WiNDOM. 

Senator Conkling then nominated General 
Grant. Mr. Bradley of Kentucky, seconded him. 
The Senator's speech is given in full. He said : 

" When asked what State he hails from, 
Our sole reply shall be. 
He comes from Appomattox, 
And its famous apple-tree."* 

* There has since been much discussion concerning the correctness of 
these famous lines of Private Miles O'Reilly, but the biographer believes 
he reproduces them as uttered by the speaker. This verse was suggested 
to Mr. Conkling on the previous evening by the Hon. Thomas Murphy, 
ex-Colleclor of New York. 



NOMINA TES GRANT. 597 

In obedience to instructions I should never dare to disregard — 
expressing, also, my own firm convictions — I rise to propose a 
nomination with which the country and the Republican party can 
grandly win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of 
American politics. It will decide, for many years, -whether the 
country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of 
the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Re- 
publican candidates can do that. The need is not of a candidate 
who is popular in the Territories, because they have no vote. 
The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States. Not 
the doubtful States of the North alone, but doubtful States of the 
South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to 
take little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, 
but everything to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses 
upon the conscience of this Convention is of a candidate who can 
carry doubtful States both North and South. And believing that 
he, more surely than any other man, can carry New York against 
any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several 
States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never 
defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious 
borne by living man. 

His services attest his greatness, and the country — nay, the 
world — knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in 
things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things 
done. And perils and emergencies will search in vain in the 
future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other 
on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never 
having had a policy to enforce against the will of the people, he 
never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never 
desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of 
human distinction, modest, firm, simple and self-poised, having 
filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the high-born 
and the titled, but the poor and the lowly in the uttermost ends 
of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the 
needs and the defects of many systems of government, and he 
has returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of 
knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense 
which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light that beat 



598 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

upon him during sixteen years, the most trying, the most porten- 
tous, the most perilous in the nation's history. 

Vilified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by unnumbered press- 
es, not in other lands but in his own, assaults upon him have 
seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Cal- 
umny's ammunition has all been exploded ; the powder has all been 
burned once; its force is spent; and the name of Grant will glit- 
ter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the republic 
when those who have tried to tarnish that name have moldered 
in forgotten graves, and when their memories and their epitaphs 
have vanished utterly. 

Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he 
has ever, in peace as in war, shown the genius of common sense. 
The terms he prescribed for Lee's surrender foreshadowed the 
wisest prophecies and principles of true reconstruction. Victor 
in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his 
aversion to war and his love of peace by an arbitration of inter- 
nal disputes, which stands as the wisest, the most majestic exam- 
ple of its kind in the world's diplomacy. When inflation, at the 
height of its popularity and frenzy, had swept both Houses of 
Congress, it was the veto of Grant which, single and alone, over- 
threw expansion and cleared the way for specie resumption. To 
him, immeasurably more than to any other man, is due the fact 
that every paper dollar is at last as good as gold. 

With him as our leader we shall have no defensive cam- 
paign. No! We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall 
have no apologies to make. The shafts and the arrows have 
all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his 
feet. 

Life, liberty and property will find a safeguard in him. When 
he said of the colored men in Florida, " Wherever I am, they may 
come also " — when he so said, he meant that, had he the power, 
the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be 
driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves 
of their murdered dead. When he refused to see Dennis Kearney 
in California, he meant that communism, lawlessness and disorder, 
although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole 
city, would always find a foe in him. He meant that, popular or 



GRANT FOR PRESIDENT. 599 

unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly 
where they may. 

His integrity, his common sense, his courage, his unequaled 
experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only 
argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of poli- 
tics has devised is one which would dumfounder Solomon, be- 
cause he thought there was nothing new under the sun. Havmg 
tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must 
not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My country- 
men! my countrymen! what stultification does not such a fal- 
lacy involve ! The American people exclude Jefferson Davis from 
public trust. Why? why? Because he was the arch-traitor 
and would-be destroyer; and now the same people are asked to 
ostracize Grant and not to trust him. Why? why? I repeat: 
because he was the arch-preserver of his country, and because, 
not only in war, but twice as civil magistrate, he gave his highest, 
noblest efforts to the republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, 
or is it hypocrisy's masquerade? There is no field of human 
activity, responsibility, or reason in which rational beings object 
to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not 
found wanting. There is, I say, no department of human reason in 
which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience, 
making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who 
shoes your horse, to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer 
who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose 
hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your 
soul, what man do you reject because by his works you have 
known him and found him faithful and fit? What makes the 
Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common 
sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent ? Who dares— who 
dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the 
birthright of the American people ? Can it be said that Grant 
has used official power and place to perpetuate his term ? He has 
no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without 
patronage and without emissaries, without committees, without 
bureaus, without telegraph wires running from his house to this 
Convention, or running from his house anywhere else, this man 
is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt un- 



600 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

less this Convention did as they said. He is a Republican who 
never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the 
candidates of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule 
of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and they mean 
to uphold that faith against not only the common enemy, but 
against the charlatans, jayhawkers, tramps and guerrillas— the men 
who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and 
then on the other. This Convention is master of a supreme op- 
portunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of 
his election. It can make sure not only of his election, but of his 
certain and peaceful inauguration. More than all, it can break 
that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can over- 
throw an organization whose very existence is a standing protest 
against progress. 

The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very 
hope of existence is' a solid South. Its success is a menace to 
order and prosperity. I say this Convention can overthrow that 
power. It can dissolve and emancipate a solid South. It can 
speed the nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achieve- 
ments. 

Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look 
beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party 
advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achieve- 
ments, marching to certain and lasting victory with its greatest 
Marshal at its head. 

This is Senator Conkling's most famous short 
speech. He stood on a reporter's table about one- 
third of the distance down the hall. A spectator 
who sat in the last row of chairs at the rear of 
the building told Mr. John D. Lawson, of New 
York, that he, at his place, caught every word. 
Mr. Lawson afterward asked the Senator, "How 
did you make yourself heard all over the 
house ? " 



CONK LING AND GARFIELD. 6oi 

The latter replied, " By speaking- very deliber- 
ately, and carefully pronouncing the vowels!^ 

In answer to a similar question, Daniel Webster 
once said: " I take good care of the nouns T 

A gentleman who was present at the Conven- 
tion says: 

No other man in the broad land — not Grant himself — would 
the 306 have followed. They stood by Conkling. Marvelous 
sight ! Will and honesty triumphing over intrigue and small am- 
bition ! 

He was the only man in that grand Convention who struck 
me. More than twoscore of times I saw him walk down the aisle 
to his place amid the huzzas of ten thousand throats. Stalwart 
in form, graceful in movement, proud from honest feeling and 
conscious superiority, he came into that Convention daily, the 
deerhound of grand politics and not the mongrel of spoils. Popu- 
lar sentiment was against his views, but the crowd rose to the 
man. The audience recognized the man and his moral greatness. 
Whatever may be the degradation of politics and the accidents of 
ill-educated feeling, at heart and in soul the American people love 
a brave, true man. I often think the stately form — the Corio- 
lanus of that Convention — overawed the crowd. They bowed 
before him simply because they feared him and respected his 
honesty. Garfield got the most cheers, but he did not look the 
masses in the face. Like Henry Clay, he poured the oil of com- 
promise on every motion, and acted in a negative way in all 
things. He represented the dominant spirit — but Conkling the in- 
spiration of the heroic and bold. The one got the plaudits which 
come from desire, the other the shouts which are prompted by 
the brains and the clear perception of real greatness. 

But I will not go into details. I was within twenty feet of 
both Conkling and Garfield when they respectively nominated 

* To illustrate how Roscoe Conkling habitually enunciated the vowels, 
it may be said that he always spoke of a relative whose first name was 
Eleonora, as El-e-o-n-o-ra. 



602 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Grant and Sherman. Never will I forget the scene. On a re- 
porter's table in the centre of the hall, and around him 16,000 
spectators, the grand leader of the 306 arose to proclaim his faith 
and his honest convictions. Handsome in his generous pride, 
and confident in his own powers and cause, he stood a model for 
artists,and the admiration of a sickly political world. For full ten 
minutes a mighty roar kept him silent. But with the calmness of 
a holy pride he stood and waited for the stillness of reaction. 
The graceful wave of the hand could not silence the crowd. A 
MAN was before them, and they knew it. It was not General Grant 
and his cause, but Roscoe Conkling and his heroic honesty which 
won the plaudits. * * * 

In commenting on this speech the Chicago 
Inter-Ocean remarked: 

Mr. Conkling did not address himself to the imagination or 
the heart alone, but to the reason as well. His picturesqueness 
had in it the impulse of a battle-charge; his manner was master- 
ful in its consciousness of power; all his methods in modulation, 
emphasis, and inflection were those of a man who meant to con- 
vince. 

It was a revelation to the large audience to find a man who 
could be eloquent with studied composure, who could be fervid 
without wildness, and who could hold imagery and metaphor to 
the steady pace of relentless logic without detracting from their 
special and peculiar character. The orator rode down the pur- 
poseful line of his argument, not like a cavalry leader in a charge, 
but like the commander-in-chief of an army, directing all his re- 
sources to one central point. The progress was slow, with every 
accomplishment of speech, every charm of style, every grace of 
sentiment, and every beauty of thought held subject to the re- 
straint of close reasoning. The polish given to a sentence but 
made it cut the deeper. The turn of every graceful period was 
but the opportunity to complete and clinch and send home an 
argumentative blow of telling force. The presentation of a gem 
in rhetorical finish was but the opportunity to say a good word for 
Grant. The play of sarcasm, the flash of scorn, the sabre-cuts 



OTHER NOMINATIONS. 603 

of severity, and all the pageantry of eloquence were used to help 
Grant. The address had the warmth of eulogy, the finish of a 
poem, the force and fire of a philippic. Grant was in every line 
of it, his spirit breathed in every sentence, his personality lived 
and moved in the smooth insistence of the magic words, and 
stood revealed in the climax of the peroration. 

After Messrs. Conkling- and Bradley had spoken 
in behalf of General Grant, James A. Garfield 
nominated John Sherman, of Ohio. He began by 
describing- a severe storm at sea followed by the 
time when " the hour of calm settles on the ocean." 
Mr. Winckler, of Wisconsin, and Mr. Elliott, of 
South Carolina, seconded the nomination of Mr. 
Sherman. 

Frederick Billings, of Vermont, next presented 
the name of George F. Edmunds, of that State. 
He was seconded by Mr. Sanford, of Massachu- 
setts. At last J. B. Cassoday, of Wisconsin, closed 
the list of candidates by naming Elihu B. Wash- 
BURNE, of Illinois. 

Mr. Brandegee, of Connecticut, while seconding 
the nomination of Elihu B. Washburne, said of 
Senator Conkling : 

* * -K- * ■3«- * -Jf- 

The gentleman from New York shakes his head. He shakes 
his head magnificently. No man can shake it like him, nor shake 
such rhetoric and wisdom out of it. But let me tell the gentle- 
man from New York he cannot sit down at the ear of every voter 
and give the argument that he has given to-night against the tra- 
ditions of our fathers. He may, by the magic of his eloquence, 
take this Convention and the galleries off their feet in his fervor; 



604 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

but even his great abilities, even his unmatched eloquence, can- 
not go down to the fireside of every voter and persuade them 
that all the traditions of the fathers with reference to a third term 
are but humbug and masquerade. Does he not know that his 
candidate would be on the defensive, that even the magic name 
of Grant can hardly carry him in this Convention. Does he not 
know — no one knows so well as he — that the name of Grant 
would carry this Convention thi'ough by storm if there were not 
an invincible argument against his nomination ? 

There being" no other nominations, the Conven- 
tion adjourned till morning. While walking- tow- 
ard the door, Mr. Conkling said to Amos J. 
Cummings of the New York Sun, " How do you 
feel to-day ?" He replied that he felt well, and 
added, " How does Senator Conkling feel ?" Bear- 
ing in mind the vivid picture of a "staunch old 
ship" in a storm, in Mr. Frye's speech concerning 
Mr. Blaine, and General Garfield's already men- 
tioned reference to the ocean while nominating 
Mr. Sherman, he answered, "I presume I feel very 
much as you feel — jrm-sick!" 

FIFTH DAY, JUNE 7. 

The first business of the day was balloting for 
Presidential candidates, and the roll of the States 
was called. 

The result of the first ballot was as follows : 
Total number of votes cast, 755 ; of which Ulys- 
ses S. Grant received 304, James G. Blaine 2S4, 
John Sherman 93, George F. Edmunds 34, Elihu 



REFUSES TO BE THE CAN-DID A TE. 605 

B. Washburne 30, William Windom 10 — necessary 
to a choice 378. New York had divided her vote 
as follows, Grant 51, Blaine 17, and Sherman 2. 

The vote of the State remained the same up to 
the seventeenth ballot ; when it stood : Grant 
50, Blaine 18, and Sherman 2. 

During the day (Wednesday) twenty-eight bal- 
lots were taken without arriving at a choice. The 
key-note of the Convention had now become : 
" Anything-to-beat-Grant." On Monday evening 
delegates from other States visited the room of 
Senator Conkling and offered him the nomination. 
They assured him that he would meet with little 
opposition if Grant was " out of the race." He thus 
replied to them : " Gentlemen, I appreciate your 
kind proposition. I could not be nominated in 
any event, for if I were to receive every other vote 
in the Convention, my own would still be lacking, 
and that I would not give. I am here as the 
agent of New York to support General Grant to 
the end. Any tnan who would forsake him under 
such conditions does 7iot descT^e to be elected, and 
could not be elected^ 

If he had accepted this proposal he might have 
received the nomination, and it is not too much to 
say that his election would have been a foregone 
conclusion. Hence it may be said that Roscoe 
Conkling declined an opportunity of becoming 



6o6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

President of the United States. He further de- 
clared that either Grant or Blaine should be nom- 
inated, and that there must be 710 dark horse. 

SIXTH DAY, JUNE 8. 

At ten o'clock the president called the meeting 
to order and said, " Another ballot will be taken. 
The clerk will call the roll." 

On the thirty-fifth ballot the followers of Grant 
mustered their full strength, and gave him 313 
votes. 

On the thirty-sixth ballot the " deadlock " was 
broken. The total number of votes cast was 755. 
Necessary to a choice, 378, of which, 

James A. Garfield received 399. 
Ulysses S. Grant 306. 

James G. Blaine 42. 

Elihu B. Washburne 5. 

John Sherman 3. 

The New York delegates gave fifty votes for 
General Grant and twenty votes for General 
Garfield. 

The president then declared the result : "James 
A. Garfield, of Ohio, is nominated for President of 
the United States. Shall the nomination be made 
unanimous ?" 

Thereupon Senator Conkling, being on his feet, 
thus addressed the chair : 



MOVES GARFIELD'S UNANIMOUS NOMINATION. tOj 

James A. Garfield, of Ohio, having received a majority of all 
the votes cast, I rose to move that he be unanimously presented 
as the nominee of the Convention. The Chair, under the rule, 
anticipates my motion; but, being on my feet, I avail myself of 
the opportunity to congratulate the Republican party of the 
United States upon the good-nature and the well-tempered rivalry 
which has distinguished this animated contest. [Several dele- 
gates, " Louder!"] I would speak louder, but, having for hours 
sat shivering under the cold wind of these open windows, I find 
myself unable to do so. I was in the act to say that I trust the 
zeal, the fervor, and now the unanimity, seen in this great assem- 
blage will be transplanted to the field of the final conflict, and 
that all of us who have borne a part against each other will be 
found with equal zeal bearing the banner, with equal zeal carrying 
the lance of the Republican party, into the ranks of the enemy. 

Mr. Benjamin Harrison, of Indiana, briefly ad- 
dressed the Convention. He referred to having 
received " one vote from some misguided friend 
from Pennsylvania." 

The question was then taken and the motion 
adopted. 

The nomination for Vice-President being the 
next business in order, the roll was again called, 
and Chester A. Arthur, of New York, was nom- 
inated on the first ballot, receiving sixty-nine out 
of seventy votes from his own State. 

It has been asserted that this nomination was a 
boon to Roscoe Conkling to secure his support 
of General Garfield. To deny this is almost super- 
erogatory. Senator Conkling had failed in . his 
efforts to effect the nomination of General Grant. 



6o8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The men who had succeeded in making General 
Garfield the candidate were now panic-stricken 
lest they might not socure the full vote of the 
Republican party. Governor Dennison, of Ohio, 
was authorized to request Mr, Conkling to name 
a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. He sternly 
refused to make any suggestion. Then other New 
York delegates were asked to propose a name. 
Both Chester A. Arthur and Stewart L. Woodford 
were considered, and General Arthur won the 
prize. The Convention at 7:30 in the evening 
adjourned sine die. 

On his return home Senator Conkling remarked 
to a friend: "This is my first and last National 
Convention." Senator Conkling then received 
from General Grant the following grateful letter : 

Milwaukee, Wis., June 10, 1880. 
My Dear Senator Conkling: 

I hoped to see you in Chicago yesterday morning on my 
way here, but was informed on my arrival there that you had left 
for Washington the night before. Just before starting, however, 
I heard that you had delayed your departure until the morning, 
and were still therefore in the city. But as a special train was 
then awaiting me, and a small party g.oing with me from Chi- 
cago, and it was about the time you would probably be starting, I 
was disappointed in the opportunity of thanking you in person for 
your magnificent and generous support during and before the 
Convention. I feel very grateful to you and the three hundred 
and odd who stood with you through your week's labors. Indi- 
vidually, I am much relieved at the result, having grown weary 
of constant abuse— always disagreeable, and doubly so when it 



GRANT MEDALS FOR THE jo6. 6O9 

comes from former professed friends. I have no presentiment as 
to what is likely to be the result of the labors of the Convention, 
or the result of the election which is to follow, but I hope for the 
best to the country. 

Mrs. Grant asks me to present her kindest regards to you and 
to Mrs. Conkling. 

Very truly yours, 

U. S, Grant. 

Some months after, Chauncey I. Filley, a dele- 
gate from St. Louis, caused "Grant" medals to 
be struck for the 306. 



39 



i88o. 
CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. 

/^ENERAL GARFIELD was escorted from 
Chicago to Ohio by a band of enthusiastic 
friends. On the homeward journey his heuten- 
ant, with ill-timed enthusiasm, pubUcly thanked 
God that the nation had been dehvered from 
" Grantism." Editors of anti-Grant newspapers 
congratulated the Republican party upon its sup- 
posed emancipation from the "baneful rule" of 
Grant and Conkling. Although the supporters of 
General Grant, it was understood, would have no 
voice in directing the policy of the Republican 
party, the friends of Garfield confidently reckoned 
upon their hearty co-operation in the election of 
the candidates nominated at Chicago. 

While, however, they were felicitating each 
other in this way, the Democratic journals opened 
an attack upon General Garfield. They began by 
publishing his official record, copying it from the 
leading Republican newspapers of the year 1873. 

The friends of Mr. Garfield soon perceived that 

610 



HIS EMBARRASSING SILENCE. 6 1 I 

their prospects of success were clouded. It became 
a serious question : Where are the votes to come 
from? Senator ConkHng had been unstintingly 
abused. His dignified silence, however, was felt 
by them to be ominous of possible defeat. It 
was of vital importance to obtain his active co- 
operation. 

During the month of June, while Congress was 
still in session, General Garfield visited Washing- 
ton. He endeavored to obtain a private interview 
with Senator Conkling, but the latter, leaving his 
card in the usual way, warily avoided him. Gen- 
eral Garfield then wrote the following letter : 

RiGGS House, | 

Washington, D. C, June 17, 1880. j 
Dear Senator: I am sorry to have missed your call. Will 
you please name a time — to-morrow — when I may call on you at 
your room. I wish to see you away from the crowd of callers. 

Very truly yours, 

J. A. Garfield. 
Hon. RoscoE Conkling, 

Wormley's. 

Mr. Conkling's reason for avoiding a personal 
conference with the candidate was that he was 
unwilling to trust to Mr: Garfield's imperfect 
memory of a private conversation, however unim- 
portant. 

Mr. Conkling was not willing to be a party to 
any agreement with the candidate that required 



6l2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

secrecy. He anticipated the course which Mr. 
Garfield would pursue if he should be elected, and 
hence would submit no proposals. He desired no 
pledges concerning the control of patronage in 
New York. In fact, he detested pledges in politics. 

In the early part of August the famous Fifth 
Avenue Hotel conference of Republican chieftains 
took place. It is said to have been planned to af- 
ford the Presidential candidate a reason for visit- 
ing the city of New York. It was believed that 
Mr. Conkling could not then avoid meeting him. 
He, however, saw through the artifice. Visiting at 
the house of his brother in Tenth Street, he failed to 
occupy the chair which had been reserved for him 
in the private parlor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. 

A gentleman who was present gives the follow- 
ing account of the meeting : 

* * * In that conference, General Garfield stated that, in the 
event of his election to the Presidency, it was his intention to ap- 
point one of his Cabinet officers from New York, and that in mak- 
ing federal appointments in New York which extended beyond a 
Congressional district, he would consult the party organization as 
represented by the Senators in Congress, the Vice-President, the 
Governor of the State and the State Committee, and that he would 
be guided by such organization, provided the persons recom- 
mended were fit and proper for appointment. 

Among the offices he specifically mentioned by way of illus- 
tration were, United States District-Attorneys, United States 
Marshals and the Collector of the port of New York. That in 
reference to federal appointments within Congressional districts, 
he would consult with the Republican representative in Congress 



MR. GARFIELD'S PROMISES. 613 

from such district, and that whenever an appointment within a 
district assumed importance and magnitude reaching in its poHti- 
cal effect beyond a Congressional district, like consultation would 
be had with reference to such appointment as in the case of 
United States District-Attorneys, Marshals and Collector of the 
port of New York. 

Never for a moment duringr the canvass were 
the two men alone with each other ; and not till 
February i6 or thereabouts did they meet in pri- 
vate conference. On that occasion the Senator 
was summoned to Mentor by a letter written on 
January 31, 1881. The President-elect then stated 
that he wished " to consult you (him) on several 
subjects, * ^ '^* and especially in reference to New 
York interests."" 

It has been asserted that during the summer of 
1880 Senator Conkling would not enter the can- 
vass until he could go to Mentor and make a bar- 
gain with the candidate. The author simply gives 
the facts in rebuttal of this calumny. 

Mr. Garfield's friends had been earnestly plead- 
ing and endeavoring to persuade Mr. Conkling to 
take an active part. He quaintly replied, "There 
are some matters which must be attended to be- 
fore I can enter the canvass." This remark was 
taken up by the newspapers as a theme for ridi- 
cule, and repeated throughout the Northern States. 

Strong appeals had already been made to Gen- 

* This letter is published in facsimile on page 634. 



6l4 L^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

eral Grant to enter the canvass. He had yielded at 
last to the wishes of his Republican friends. He 
sent for Senator Conkling and asked him to 
" enter the field." The latter hesitated. He had 
no favors to ask, he remarked, in the event of Mr. 
Garfield's election, and knowing him personally, 
he feared that " he would be humiliated in his own 
State." He also said of the candidate: "There's 
no sand in him." This remark he often repeated 
during the canvass. At General Grant's urgent 
solicitation, however, Mr. Conkling decided to 
speak in the campaign. 

When giving his consent he remarked : " If you 
insist on my speaking for him, I shall carry him 
through ;" but he meant to speak for the Republi- 
can party and not for the candidate. A friend of 
the Senator then remarked : " If Mr. Garfield is 
indebted to Mr. Blaine for his nomination, he 
will have to thank Mr. Conkling for his election!' 
Finally Mr. Conkling adjusted his private business 
and was able to place himself at the disposal of 
the Republican State Committee. There was no 
State Convention to meet in the autumn. His 
first action had been to purchase from his clients 
the legal services which they had retained him to 
perform. To this end he returned the sum of 
$18,000, including one fee of $10,000! This 
amount, added to other expenses, made the total 



A LARGE CONTRIBUTION. 615 

$29,000. Certainly this amount, in all fairness, 
should be regarded as Roscoe Conkling's contri- 
bution to the election of Garfield and Arthur. 

As Senator Conkling had placed himself under 
the orders of the State Committee, General Ar- 
thur, who had lately been the chairman, asked 
him to make three speeches in Ohio, and told him 
what places he, in a consultation with General 
Garfield, had selected. 

The Democrats carried Maine at the State elec- 
tion in September. This was inauspicious to their 
adversaries. Zealous Republicans in the city of 
New York had contributed many thousands of 
dollars to that State, and Mr. Blaine's influence at 
home had failed to secure a victory. At this mo- 
ment when all were disheartened, Roscoe Conk- 
ling threw himself into the breach by addressing 
an immense meeting of citizens at the Academy 
of Music in New York on September 1 7. To give 
the reader an idea of the number of the audience, 
it may be said that private boxes containing four 
chairs were occupied by ten persons ; some were 
sitting on the floor, some standing, and others lean- 
ing against the walls. 

General Lloyd Aspinwall called the assemblage 
to order, and read a letter from General Grant to 
Chester A. Arthur. He then introduced, as the 
presiding ofiScer, the Hon. Hamilton Fish, who was 



6l6 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

perhaps, the oldest living political friend of Mr. 
Conkling. After a few well-chosen remarks he 
presented the Senator to the audience. He spoke 
for three and a half hours. His discourse was not 
read, but delivered from head-lines on large en- 
velopes which, as already stated, had long been 
the orator's custom when speaking from notes. 
The speech was fully reported in the New York 
journals. It was afterward printed as a campaign 
document, making a i2mo of sixty pages. Al- 
though the night was excessively warm, the audi- 
ence, many of whom were standing in the aisles, 
corridors and boxes, remained till the close of his 
speech. Tickets of admission had been issued, 
and so great was the demand that 20,000 were 
given out by the managers of the meeting. This 
was, with few exceptions, the largest and most 
enthusiastic audience that the Senator ever ad- 
dressed. 

It was generally conceded that this oration was 
the pivot of the Republican canvass. Even such 
a strong Democratic organ as the Sitn said that the 
campaign had '• languished " up to this time. While 
the Senator was speaking, the veteran editor, Thur- 
low Weed, tottered upon the stage leaning upon 
the arm of Alderman John J. Morris. The vener- 
able gentleman was greeted with loud cheers, and 
turning to see the source of the applause, Mr. 



GRANT AND CONK LING IN OHIO. 617 

Conkling advanced, and, shaking his hand, escort- 
ed him to an adjacent chair. 

Mr. ConkUng next set out for Ohio. General 
Grant having persuaded him to enter the campaign, 
it was agreed that they should meet at Warren 
and canvass the State together. 

Referring to the Senator's Western trip, George 
C. Gorham in June, 1888, said: 

The history of politics in this country records no instance 
where, within a like period, the speeches of one man produced 
such an effect as did those of Senator Conkling in that month of 
September. Never before were such multitudes assembled to- 
gether. Never before were great popular assemblages so swayed 
by any man, if Mr. Clay be alone excepted. The party was 
aroused as it had not been since the war. Hope succeeded to 
despair. The tide of battle was turned, and when the great New 
Yorker had spoken at Warren, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis 
and Lafayette he had saved the day. General Grant's presence 
and his brief and striking addresses, especially the model one at 
Warren, were most important elements in this unrivaled cam- 
paign, but the matchless eloquence of Conkling touched the 
popular heart, and brought out the reserves of the party for the 
result which they alone could insure. 

The election of Governor Porter in Indiana in October made 
Republican success possible in New York, but that result was only 
finally assured by the triumphal march of Grant and Conkling 
through the State on their return from the West to New York 
City. Who will pretend that, but for the exertions of these two 
patriotic men and faithful Republicans, there was the least chance 
for Garfield to carry Indiana or New York or to be elected Presi- 
dent ? 

The election of Garfield and Arthur was, as we have seen, 
made apparendy impossible by the loss of Maine under Blaine's 
leadership in September. It was made again possible by the 



6l8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

work of General Grant and Senator Conkling in Ohio and In- 
diana in October, and made certain by their final efforts in New 
York.* 

The campaign trip of General Grant and Sena- 
tor Conkling began at Warren, Ohio, September 
28, 1880. In this connection a local paper publish- 
ed the following: 

Some forty thousand people, notwithstanding the inclement 
weather, came from adjacent towns, in all kinds of vehicles. People 
from Champion, Bristol, Southington, from Democratic Lordstown, 
and from all parts of the county, came to greet and cheer the great 
General and his companions, and to listen to the words of wisdom 
that were sure to come from that sturdy statesman and great 
orator, Senator Roscoe Conkling, of New York. It was a great 
day for Warren — a great day for Ohio. Speeches were made by 
General Grant and Senator Conkling. In the party accompanying 
these two illustrious men were General Logan, ex-United States 
Senator Simon Cameron, the Hon. Amos Townsend, U. H. Paint- 
er, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, J. E. Heistand, of the Lancas- 
ter (Pa.) Examiner^ Messrs. John Tod, S. T. Everett, George 
W. Howe and others. The meeting between General Grant and 
Senator Conkling (it being their first since the General's return 
from his famous trip around the world) was most cordial, and 
evoked from the multitude much cheering. Some one proposed 
three cheers for Senator Conkling, and they were given with a 
will, the honored gentleman turning with a pleasant smile and 
bowing to the throng. 

There were two meetings at Warren. At one 
of them the hero of Appomattox made a short 
speech. It was issued as a campaign document in 
the followinof form: 

* It has been stated that Mr. Conkling had "opened the political 
ball" in New York, but General Grant was not hopeful, for he had lately 
told alriend that he thought the Democrats would carry Indiana and Ohio. 



GRANT'S SPEECH A T WARREN. 619 

*' THE CASE SUMMED UP IN SEVEN MINUTES BY GEN- 
ERAL GRANT." 
At Warren, Ohio, on the twenty-eighth of September, the Hon- 
orable Roscoe Conkling addressed a Republican mass meeting, 
and General U. S. Grant presided. 

Before introducing the Senator, General Grant said: 

In view of the known character and ability of the speaker who is to ad- 
dress you to-day, and his long public career, and association with the lead- 
ing statesmen of this country for the past twenty years, it would not be 
becoming in me to detain you with many remarks of my own. But it may 
be proper for me to account to you on the first occasion of my presiding 
at political meetings for the faith that is in me. 

I am a Republican, as the two great political parties are now divided, 
because the Republican party is a national party seeking the greatest 
good for the greatest number of citizens. There is not a precinct in this 
vast nation where a Democrat cannot cast his ballot and have it counted 
as cast. No matter what the prominence of the opposite party, he can 
proclaim his political opinions, even if he is only one among a thousand, 
without fear and without proscription on account of his opinions. There 
are fourteen States, and localities in some other States, where Republicans 
have not this privilege. 

This is one reason why I am a Republican. But I am a Republican 
for many other reasons. The Republican party assures protection to life 
and property, the public credit, and the payment of the debts of the Gov- 
ernment, State, county, or municipality so far as it can control. The 
Democratic party does not promise this; if it does, it has broken its prom- 
ises to the extent of hundreds of millions, as many Northern Democrats 
can testify to their sorrow. I am Republican, as between the existing 
parties, because it fosters the production of the field and farm, and of 
manufactories, and it encourages the general education of the poor as well 
as the rich. The Democratic party discourages all these when in absolute 
power. The Republican party is a party of progress, and of liberty tow- 
ard its opponents. It encourages the poor to strive to better their chil- 
dren, to enable them to compete successfully with their more fortunate as- 
sociates, and, in fine, it secures an entire equality before the law of every 
citizen, no matter what his race, nationality, or previous condition. It 
tolerates no privileged class. Every one has the opportunity to make 
himself all he is capable of. 

Ladies and gentlemen, do you believe this can be truthfully said in the 
greater part of fourteen of the States of this Union to-day which the 
Democratic party control absolutely ? The Republican party is a party of 
principles; the same principles prevailing wherever it has a foothold. 
The Democratic party is united in but one thing, and that is in getting 



620 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

control of the Government in all its branches. It is for internal improve- 
ment at the expense of the Government in one section and against this in 
another. It favors repudiation of solemn obligations in one section and 
honest payment of its debts in another, where public opinion will not tol- 
erate any other view. It favors fiat money in one place and good money 
in another. Finally, it fa\'ors the pooling of all issues not favored by the 
Republicans, to the end that it may secure the one principle upon which 
the party is a most harmonious unit, namely, getting control of the Gov- 
ernment in all its branches. 

I have been in some part of every State lately in rebellion within the 
last year. I was most hospitably received at every place where I stop- 
ped. My receptions were not by the Union class alone, but by all classes, 
without distinction. I had a free talk with many who were against me in 
war, and who have been against the Republican party ever since. They 
were, in all instances, reasonable men, judged by what they said. I be- 
lieved then, and believe now, that they sincerely want a break-up in this 
" Solid South" political condition. They see that it is to their pecuniary 
interest, as well as to their happiness, that there should be harmony and 
confidence between all sections. They want to break away from the 
slavery which binds them to a party name. They want a pretext that 
enough of them can unite upon to make it respectable. Once started, the 
Solid South will go as Ku-Kluxism did before, as is so admirably told by 
Judge Tourgee in his Fools Errand. When the break comes, those who 
start it will be astonished to find how many of their friends have been 
in favor of it for a long time, and have only been waiting to see some one 
take the lead. This desirable solution can only be attained by the defeat, 
and continued defeat, of the Democratic party as now constituted.* 

Mr. Conkling wished to proceed directly to 
Cleveland. General Grant, however, insisted that 
they should stop at Mentor in order to pay their 
respects to Mr. Garfield. Ex-Senator Simon Came- 
ron had also requested the orators to visit Mentor, 
as will be seen by the following extract from his 
recent letter to the author : 

* The following item is taken from a Warren (Ohio) newspaper. "After 
the monster meeting General Grant and Senator Conkling left the grounds 
in the same carriage. The Senator bared his head to the multitude. As 
the driver started away there was a rush for the carriage, with cries, ' Un- 
hitch the horses! ' but the driver whipped up and escaped with his cargo."' 



CONK LING PA YS HIS O WN EXPENSES. 62 I 

" At the instance and urgent solicitation of Mr. 
Garfield, I met General Grant and Mr. Conkling 
at Warren, O., shortly before the Presidential 
election in 1880, and prevailed upon them to visit 
Mr. Garfield in Mentor." 

On the preceding day Mr. Cameron had seen 
the Presidential candidate at Mentor, and soon 
afterward said, in substance, to a friend: "I told 
Mr. Garfield that he had no chance unless those 
men (Grant, Conkling and Logan) supported 
him." 

It may interest the reader to know that Senator 
Conkling was very particular about paying for his 
private car and his hotel bills during this tour 
through Ohio and Indiana. The following remi- 
niscences are taken from the Oswego (N. Y.) 
Times, in which they were published soon after 
his death. 

In referring to the story of Roscoe Conkling's connection with 
the Garfield campaign, the Buffalo Express has this to say: 

It is true he was strangely scrupulous in avoiding pecuniary or other 
personal obligations. He certainly paid every cent of his own expenses in 
the Garfield campaign, and would not allow anybody — committee or other 
— to settle a hotel bill or pay even hack hire on his account. But this was 
not a political distaste; he was very proud. From but very few even of 
his intimate friends -only from those of whose love as well as fidelity he 
felt perfectly sure — would he accept the slightest favor, or even courtesy, 
that involved an expenditure of money. He carried this sense of pecuni- 
ary independence so far that it became actually a weakness on the part of 
a strong man. But many great men of whom the world has heard would 
have been stronger than they were if they had been afflicted with Conk- 
ling's peculiar weakness. 



622 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

In confirmation of this, the writer remembers that on the night 
after Mr. Conkling's great speech in Albany during the Garfield 
canvass, Mr. Conkling, feeling the need of refreshment, went with 
the writer to the " Windsor." He was followed by the local com- 
mittee and many prominent gentlemen, who, on Mr. Conkling's 
invitation, took seats at the tables, he officiating as host. Near 
the close of the entertainment Mr. Conkling whispered a request 
to the writer that he should be sure and settle the bill before it 
was done by any one else, which he did. The Committee and 
other gentlemen went to the cashier and found that the bill had 
been settled by the writer, and paid no further attention to the 
matter. A serenade and a reception followed at the Delavan 
House, after which Mr. Conkling asked what the amount of the 
bill was. He was told, " It was no matter ; it had been paid and 
it was all right." He then said: '* If you do not wish to offend 
me, you will tell me the amount of that bill. If I meet you, and 
you invite me to refreshments and pay the bill, or vice versa, 
socially, it is all right ; but I am now out on this political can- 
vass, and I have not allowed any committee or any one else to de- 
fray any portion of my expenses, and Albany must not be an ex- 
ception. So," said he, *' if you do not wish to offend me most 
seriously, you will tell me just how much that bill was, and I 
shall pay it." And of course, under the circumstances, he was told. 

The railroad companies made no charge for the 
transportation of the Grant-Conkling' "caravan," 
for the reason that their speaking-tour brought 
thousands to Warren, Cleveland and other towns. 
In this way, by running excursion trains on purpose 
to enable many to hear Mr. Conkling's addresses, 
the company profited richly. Uriah IL Painter 
acted as " advance agent," and while in Philadel- 
phia procured an order for trains and cars. 

On September 29 the party visited the Presi- 
dential candidate at Mentor. As already stated, 



CONKLING AND GRANT AT MENTOR. 623 

Ex-Senator Simon Cameron had come to War- 
ren directly from General Garfield, at the request 
of the latter, to urge upon Mr. Conkling the im- 
portance of this visit. It would solidify the party, 
he declared, and create general enthusiasm. Mr. 
Conkling pleaded that Mentor was out of their 
way, and it would greatly inconvenience him to 
stop there long. General Cameron immediately 
procured an assurance from the railroad officials 
on the special train that the party could go by 
way of Mentor with little inconvenience, and reach 
Cleveland in time, provided he did not remain 
more than half an hour. General Grant added his 
solicitations, and Mr. Conkling consented. They 
arrived at Mentor in the midst of a heavy rain, 
and took carriages at once for General Garfield's 
house, three-fourths of a mile away. As they 
drove up, General Garfield came out to them, bare- 
headed, and embracing the Senator, exclaimed 

" Conkling, you have saved me ! Whatever man can 
do for man, that will I do for you /" 

Several stenographic reporters accompanied 
the party to the house, in the hope of obtaining a 
good ''story" to telegraph to their journals. Mr. 
Painter has told the author what took place on 
this occasion. 

When the company reached the mansion of 
Mr. Garfield, he complained bitterly that the Ohio 



624 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Republican Central Committee could not raise 
enough money to carry the State. On enter- 
ing the house, the Senator turned to Mr. Painter, 
and said, " Don't you leave me one moment while 
I am here." He was then presented to the mother 
of the Presidential nominee, and they, together 
with Mr. Painter, sat on the sofa. General Gar- 
field urged the Senator to take lunch, but he de- 
clined with thanks. The General then seemed 
much embarrassed, and said to Mr. Conkling, 
"Come up-stairs to my study." While walking 
through the hall, the latter placed his hand on 
Mr. Painter's shoulder and whispered, "Remem- 
ber what I said to you." The trio went to the 
floor above and entered the library. Suddenly 
turning round, Mr. Garfield saw that a third per- 
son was present, and looked at him as if to say, 
" What are you doing here ? " This was an awk- 
ward position for Mr. Painter. He was an unwel- 
come guest in a gentleman's room. The door 
remained open, and no political topics were dis- 
cussed. In about fifteen minutes other persons 
came in, and this ended the "conference." After 
some informal conversation, the company returned 
in carriages to the railway station. Leaving Men- 
tor, General Grant and Mr. Conkling, with their 
party, proceeded by special train to Cleveland, 
where the Senator was to speak in the evening. 



AT CLEVELAND AND CINCINNATL 625 

According- to competent judges, this speech 
was the best one of the series during the campaign. 
He explained the poHcy of the Repubhcan party 
in building up the nation. This was, perhaps, the 
most elaborate discussion of the tariff that he ever 
gave. 

Concerning Mr. Conkling's speech at Cleveland, 
one of the Cincinnati newspapers of October 2 
said, " It was different from his speech at Warren; 
and that in New York on September 17 was un- 
like either." The same authority thus continues: 
"So, also, was the speech at the Highland Flouse, 
last night, a change from anything the versatile 
Senator from New York has uttered durinof the 
campaign. Political speech-makers generally can- 
not bear reporting, as they repeat themselves. 
Mr. Conkling is an exception." 

At Cincinnati Mr. Conkling spoke, October i, 
to an immense throng", thousands of people being 
unable to get within sound of his voice. It was 
admitted by the local newspapers to have been 
the greatest political meeting that was ever held 
in that vicinity. The next day, at the Highland 
House, he addressed several thousand eager listen- 
ers, and was afterward entertained by the Lincoln 
Club. He then took an airing behind the famous 
mare, Maud S. 

The Senator went next to Indiana, where he 
40 



626 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

made four lengthy speeches to large assemblages. 
The people of the southeastern part of the State, 
to the number of 30,000, flocked to the city of 
Richmond to hear him. He then went to Terre 
Haute, where, according to the local journals, some 
35,000 persons gathered to greet him. His speech 
there lasted three hours. 

When Senator Conkling concluded his speech 
to the acres of people on the battle-field of Tippe- 
canoe, gray-haired hearers, in their admiration of 
him, went so far as to say that they had always 
regarded Henry Clay as the greatest orator that 
America ever produced, but they must now ac- 
knowledge that Roscoe Conkling surpassed him. 
Ex-Senator Henry S. Lane, there known as "the 
old man eloquent," told U. H. Painter that the 
Terre Haute speech was "the best he had ever 
heard." In short, the Senator, although famous as 
an advocate and orator in the East and at Wash- 
ington, was not personally known to Western au- 
diences until the summer of 1880. 

During the remainder of the canvass, Senator 
Jonkling spoke in the following cities in the State 
of New York : Albany, "Owego, Utica (twice), 
Rochester, Buffalo, Lockport, Jamestown. 

It will be seen that the Senator made about 
twenty speeches in behalf of Garfield and Arthur. 
They were delivered during the last six weeks of 



GARFIELD ELECTED. 62/ 

the campaign in New York, Ohio and Indiana. 
The addresses varied in length from one to nearly 
four hours. 

In the opinion of many competent witnesses, his 
rallying to the aid of the Republican candidates 
saved a forlorn hope. 

Defeat was staring General Garfield in the face, 
when Roscoe Conkling raised the flagging spirits 
of his supporters and redeemed the fortunes of 
the day. 

*' One blast upon his bugle horn 
Were worth a thousand men." 

The election took place November 6. The Re- 
publican candidates carried every Northern State 
except New Jersey, and received a plurality of 
about 10,000 in the popular vote. Their majority 
in the electoral college was fifty-nine. 

An eminent citizen of Utica, who is not a poli- 
tician, furnishes the following reminiscences of 
the Garfield campaign : 

As a campaign orator no one, in his day, at least, could be 
compared with him in the eloquent presentation of the questions 
at issue. His magnificent presence, his peculiar and most im- 
pressive manner, the tones of his richly-modulated voice, the 
sincerity and fervor of his utterances, all conspired to make him 
not only the prince of American orators, but toa wonderful degree 
the hope and idol of his party. All the jealousies and perils this 
exalted pre-eminence brought with it, he encountered in his own bit- 
ter experience. No one knew better than he what he owed to his 
party, no man ever felt more deeply his obligations for the honors 



628 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

bestowed upon him, or strove more conscientiously to meet all 
the demands of patriotic service, by an almost slavish devotion 
to the high trusts committed to him. This conscientious and 
whole-souled devotion to the discharge of every official duty, not 
only made him indifferent to selfish and personal considerations, 
but often exposed him to the most unjust criticisms of those 
whose opinions he could not adopt, or whose selfish interests he 
would not condescend to serve. They charged him with *' sulk- 
ing in his tent," and certain newspapers pursued him with false 
and malignant charges during weeks of great bodily suffering, 
aggravated by the cruel shafts of personal detraction that pierced 
and wounded his sensitive nature — shafts aimed too often by 
those he had lifted into positions of prominence and power. 
Those who regarded Mr. Conkling as of so imperious a nature 
as not to be moved by the opinions and unjust criticisms of others 
made a sad mistake in their estimate of his character. With all 
the delicacy, sensitiveness and refinement of a gentlewoman, he 
united the strong and robust qualities of a splendidly endowed 
gentleman, and revealed these different phases of his personality 
all along the pathway of his eventful and useful life. To the 
poor and friendless especially, he often manifested his personal 
regard and sympathy, and many were the hopeless and suffering 
ones that were cheered by his tender acts and affectionate words. 

Could his political enemies have known how their cruel as- 
saults wounded his proud but sensitive spirit, they surely would 
have spared him those years of painful experience he silently en- 
dured from their unjust and malignant attacks. 

The apparent reluctance with which he entered with General 
Grant upon the Garfield campaign can be explained only on the 
theory that he foresaw, in the event of success, that he was to be 
humiliated in his own State, and exposed to the political treachery 
of an administration he was expected to do his utmost to elevate 
into power. Although painfully conscious of the dangers that 
threatened him, and in spite of the warnings of cherished friends, 
out of loyalty to the party he believed in and loved, placing his 
political life in peril, he entered upon that campaign, and, by a 
series of splendid speeches in the Western States, indispensably 
aided in v.'inning the victory. 



PERSONAL APPREHENSIONS. 629 

He said to the writer, just before entering upon that campaign: 
" But for the disgrace, I would rather spend the time required in 
Mohaivk Street jail than enter upon it." 

It was truly said of Mr. Conkling by an eloquent eulogist that 
" Poverty was his priceless crown." The end of his service in 
the councils of the nation found him poorer in money, as we be- 
lieve, than when he entered upon it. That opportunities for en- 
riching himself were at least equal to those of many who became 
reputed millionaires during a much less period, no one will for a 
moment doubt. Conspicuous among them all, there was no one 
whose influence and power would be so likely to be sought after, 
or, if rendered, so sure of reaping richer rewards. Many, doubt- 
less, were the temptations offered him to engage in schemes or 
to undertake enterprises which would have filled his empty pock- 
ets with easily earned gold. 

It was not until he entered upon the practice of his profession 
in the city of New York, after his retirement from -the Senate, 
that he knew what it was to earn money freely for himself. 

That was indeed a dark day to him when, at length, he enter- 
ed upon the experiment (as he regarded it) of practicing his pro- 
fession in the city of New York. With a very large indebtedness 
pressing upon him (contracted through the ill-advised solicitation 
of others), with heavy expenses attending his preparation for busi- 
ness, the outlook to him appeared most gloomy and discourag- 
ing. In a great city full of able and successful counselors, who 
for years had occupied its most valuable positions for business, 
he seemed to feel that his own opportunities and claims for suc- 
cess were small indeed. When first settled in his new offices, and 
ready to receive business, a friend from Utica called upon him 
and found him despondent, full of doubt and painful apprehen- 
sion as to his ability to make a place for himself in this new and 
most trying competition. 

So deeply was this friend impressed by what he witnessed 
that he said to Mr. Conkling, "I have $1,000 for which I have 
no use, and would regard it as a favor if you would make use of 
it;" to which he replied, "Not from you, my friend — not from 
you." It is hard to understand how this great man could have 
had so little faith in his own ability and efforts, when all others 



630 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

were so confident that he could find no place so filled with emi- 
nent talent that he could not, almost at once, rise to the highest 
and richest results. Yet such was the fact, which, more clearly 
than any words, revealed a modesty and want of self-appreciation 
that many have never given him the least credit for possessing. 

Immediately after his return from the West (during the Gar- 
field campaign), in which he delivered a succession of speeches 
that attracted the admiration and applause of the country, the 
writer, referring to them in eulogistic terms, was surprised to find 
in him no response and no feeling of personal pride, or even 
satisfaction, in view of all the ovations he had received in his tri- 
umphant progress through the great cities of the West. Such was 
my own astonishment at this apparent indifference that I said to 
him, "How can it be possible that all this splendid work brings 
to you no feeling of gratification? It seems to me one might al- 
most as well be destitute of such powers as to find no personal 
satisfaction in the exercise of them." 

The only explanation of such singular indifference is in the be- 
lief that his ideal was so far above his supposed attainment that 
his best efforts appeared to himself not much less than failures. 
Like the sculptor who had chiseled an exquisite statue only to 
break it in pieces because it did not reach the impossible ideal ex- 
isting only in his own imagination; so also may the limitations 
of language baffle all the efforts of genius to express and embody 
its highest aspirations. 

No public man has been so thoroughly misunderstood and so 
sadly misrepresented. Possibly much of this erroneous estimate 
has grown out of the circumstances in which his political life was 
passed. The acknowledged leader of his party, and possessing, 
as he did, clear and positive views on needed measures and fit 
men, his strong nature and clear foresight of methods for attain- 
ing desired results compelled him often to disagree with lesser 
men, and act in an independent manner, and apparently with an 
imperious will. It was his born right to be a leader of men and of 
his party; and had the party but followed his advice and heeded 
his warnings, it would not have fallen into the disgrace of a need- 
less defeat. 

It was because of his commanding nature and superior power 



PERSONAL INTEGRITY. 63 1 

that he became at length the target for jealous aspirants who, fear- 
ing him, conspired to humiliate and drive him from the high 
positions he not only adorned, but ennobled by filling them. 

It does not seem possible that any man could measure him- 
self by stricter or more unyielding rules of personal integrity 
than Mr. Conkling. He appeared to carry this rigid self-disci- 
pline beyond the bounds of mere honesty and uprightness, and 
constantly denied himself a latitude of choice and action which 
to almost any other man would have appeared consistent and right. 

If, during the intense excitement of a Presidential campaign, 
his engagements called him within a State where there was reason 
to believe money was improperly used, he would permit no confi- 
dences of that kind to be revealed to him, but made all haste to 
get beyond the chance of such knowledge. 

To attribute to such a man, so careful of his honor and in- 
tegrity in every phase of life, public and private, sentiments or 
actions unworthy or unjust, was to inflict a wound and commit a 
wrong that time could not efface or heal. 

The few last years of his political life were years of disap- 
pointment and much mental distress, because his services were 
ignored, his motives distorted, and his life of careful and cease- 
less devotion to his duties and responsibilites was misjudged, and 
by many condemned. 

It was not until he sought refuge from political persecution 
in the practice of his profession that the old pleasant smile, the 
former cheerfulness of heart, and the free play of his exuberant 
nature returned, to obscure the memories and cover the scars un- 
kindly and cruelly received in the battle of his intensely earnest 
and busy life. 

In these professional pursuits all know how rapidly he attained 
pre-eminence, and how unexampled was his success in a profes- 
sion where his legal antagonists were among the greatest and 
ablest in the land. 

The same splendid endowments that enabled him to become a 
great and shining power in his profession would have also con- 
tinued him as the successful leader of a victorious party, but for 
the jealousies, hate and treachery of men banded together to 
persecute, defame and crush him. It is pleasant to reflect that 



632 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

before his end came, people of all parties joined in the common rec- 
ognition of the value of his great services, and were proud to claim 
him as one of the greatest, truest and purest of American statesmen. 
Mr. Conkling was not an ambitious man in the sense gener- 
ally understood by this designation. That he desired and sought 
to obtain power, his commanding position always at the head of 
political contests amply proves. Endowed by nature with men- 
tal abilities of the highest order, and impelled by an instinctive 
force he could neither create nor resist, he naturally assumed the 
duties and responsibilities of a leader, and this was by common 
consent acknowledged as his rightful place. But mere personal 
ambition to govern or to shine formed no element of his charac- 
ter. If he sought power, it was only to employ it for the attain- 
ment of some beneficent end, and to advance what he believed to 
be the highest interests of State and nation. The political power 
he obtained was expended in the advancement to places of re- 
sponsibility those whom he regarded as most fit to be honored 
and trusted. The end of his ambition appeared to be attained 
when others than himself became the recipients of the dignities 
and rewards of his unselfish and patriotic endeavors. How often 
his success in the advancement of others was rewarded only by 
desertion and ingratitude, no one at all familiar with recent politi- 
cal history need be told, but few, perhaps, are aware how bitterly 
the desertions of those he had trusted and honored wounded and 
stung his proud but confiding spirit. 

Soon after the election of Garfield and Arthur, 
Mr. Conkling told an intimate political friend that 
it was his purpose to resign from the Senate and 
resume the practice of law in the city of New York. 
" I have helped elect Garfield," said he, " but I can 
have no voice in his Administration. I am heavily 
in debt, and I wish to pay up and provide for the fu- 
ture." His friends urged him to abandon his inten- 
tion, and he finally decided to yield to their wishes. 



Part Third. 



1880-1881. 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HIS LAST YEAR IN PUBLIC LIFE PRESIDENT GARFIELD 

RESIGNATION FROM THE SENATE HIS DEFEAT AT 

ALBANY. 

TOURING the third session of the Forty-sixth 
Congress Mr. Conkhng made no important 
speeches. Adhering" to his habit of rarely speak- 
ing upon measures which neither concerned the 
general welfare nor the State of New York, he 
did not take a leading part in the open sessions 
of the Senate. 

During the winter he engaged in the debates 
concerning the franking privilege, the bills refer- 
ring to the army appropriation, the pensions, the 
Mexican awards, the regulation of suits for in- 
fringements of patents, the post-office appropria- 
tion, the Congressional Library building, the naval 
construction fund, the monument to mark the 
birth-place of George Washington, the proposition 

"To establish a bureau of animal industry, and to 

633 



634 ^^^^ ^^^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

suppress contagious diseases among domestic ani- 
mals," the New York and Connecticut boundary- 
line, and last, but not least, his favorite topic — 
** the count of the electoral votes." 

Mr. Conkling also presented the petition of a 
committee of the Association of the Bar of the 
city of New York, praying that the salaries of 
the United States Judges in the State of New 
York be increased. 

In January, 1881, the Senator received from Mr. 
Garfield the following letter. It was enclosed in 
a second envelope, which bore the address, "Only 
for Senator Conkling." It is here inserted in fac- 
simile. 

Leaving Washington, Mr. Conkling arrived at 
Mentor February 16. On meeting the President- 
elect, he was cordially received. A long conver- 
sation followed, which involved the reputations 
of so many persons still living that the biographer 
does not feel justified in publishing even the sub- 
stance of it at the present time ; but it may be 
said €71 passant that the conference was not wholly 
satisfactory to Senator Conkling. 

His warm friend, Matthew H. Carpenter, a Sena- 
tor from Wisconsin, died February 24, 1881. Mr. 
Conkling was one of a committee of five Senators 
appointed to escort the remains to Milwaukee. 

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DEATH OF SENATOR CARPENTER. 635 

the remains of Senator Carpenter on April lo, 
188 1, Mr. Conkling made the following brief 
address : 

Governor : We are deputed by the Senate of the United 
States to bring back the ashes of Wisconsin's illustrious son, and 
reverently and tenderly return them to the great Commonwealth 
he served so faithfully and loved so well. To Wisconsin the pale 
and sacred clay belongs, but the memory and the fame of Mat- 
thew Hale Carpenter are the nation's treasures, and long will the 
sisterhood of States mourn the bereavement which bows all hearts 
to-day. 

In the debate upon the sundry civil bill, which 
was reported in the Senate March 2, 1881, Senator 
Conkling opposed the amendment " To enable the 
Secretary of the Treasury to reimburse the Presi- 
dent for the amount paid for expenses of the 
commission appointed to go to Louisiana (in 
the matter of the electoral count) in April, 1877, 
$3'95073-" He said : 

If that amendment is to be agreed to, I shall ask that it be on 
a vote by yeas and nays, with some confidence that on such a 
vote it will be rejected, as it has been so often before, not only 
here, but in another place to which I have no right to allude. 

The amendment was defeated. 

On a previous occasion he spoke of the "visit- 
ing statesmen " as tourists, who in the bill were 
called commissioners. 

A few days before the inauguration of President 
Garfield, an old friend visited the Senator at 



636 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Washington. Mr. Conkling remarked to him that 
the great mistake of his own Ufe had been the 
acceptance of a pohtical career before he had 
accumulated by his profession a sufficient fortune 
to make him pecuniarily independent. " You see 
these two rooms," said he; " they are the best I can 
afford, and by the utmost economy it is as much 
as I can do to make the strap and the buckle meet 
at the end of the year." 

When Mr. Garfield read his inaugural address 
Senator Conkling stood directly behind him. It 
was remarked by several that this nearness was an 
indication of the friendship which was supposed 
to exist between them. 

In fact, Mr. Conkling's relations with President 
Garfield had never been unpleasant. Though pre- 
ferring General Grant as a candidate, he had labor- 
ed magnanimously for Garfield in the Presidential 
campaign, and this service had been most warmly 
acknowledged by the President-elect when he in- 
vited the Senator to visit him at Mentor. 

The blow that sundered these relations came like 
a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. The President 
removed an experienced and worthy public officer 
in the city of New York, whose term was but half 
completed, in order, apparently, to reward a poli- 
tician for personal political service. 

This course was insisted upon in spite of the 



PRESIDENT'S THREAT TO SENATORS. 637 

strong remonstrances of the Vice-President, and 
of the sole member of the Cabinet from New 
York, as well as of her two Senators. Governor 
Cornell, in fact, sent to Washington a distinguished 
citizen of the State of New York to say person- 
ally to the President that he regarded the nomi- 
nation as a great mistake, and to urge him to 
withdraw it, but all was of no avail. 

At a caucus of the Republicans Senator Conk- 
ling made a statement of the case. It is said that 
every member present, by a rising vote, expressed 
his disapproval of the course of Mr. Garfield. 
They all agreed to remonstrate with the President, 
and ask him to withdraw this nomination. A com- 
mittee was also appointed to wait upon the Presi- 
dent and inform him that his action was likely to 
divide the Republican party in New York. 

When President Garfield was informed of this 
action of the caucus he expressed much indigna- 
tion, saying that he did not propose to be dictated 
to, and that any Republican Senator who voted 
against this nomination would thereafter receive 
no favors from the Executive. 

He also said that the Senators who, in this in- 
stance, opposed him would henceforth require " let- 
ters of introduction " to him. 

The Senate, as if conscious that wrong had been 
done, determined to consider other nominations in 



638 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

New York. Suddenly the President withdrew 
them all except the one to which there were ob- 
jections. Several Senators told Mr. Conkling that 
the President had stated to them that it would be 
unpleasant for any Senator who should oppose 
the confirmation of this particular candidate. 

The two Senators from New York, having em- 
ployed every honorable effort to arrange this mat- 
ter amicably and justly, came reluctantly to the 
conclusion, after much deliberation and consulta- 
tion, that it was their duty to resign their positions 
as Senators. Their action, they believed, would 
call the attention of the Empire State and of the 
nation to this high-handed attack upon the rights 
and independence of the Senate. 

The following extracts from their letter to Gov- 
ernor Cornell, of New York, will best set forth the 
situation: 

Washington, D. C, May 14, 1881. 

Sir: Transmitting, as we do, our resignations, respectively, of 
the great trusts with which New York has honored us, it is fit 
that we acquaint you, and through you the Legislature and peo- 
ple of the State, with the reasons which, in our judgment, make 
such a step respectful and necessary. 

Some weeks ago the President sent to the Senate in a group 
the nominations of several persons for public offices already 
filled. One of these offices is the Collectorship of the port of 
New York, now held by General Merritt; another is the Consul- 
Generalship at London, now held by General Badeau; another is 
Charg^ d' Affaires to Denmark, held by Mr. Cramer; another is 



JOINT LETTER OF RESIGNATION. 639 

the mission to Switzerland, held by Mr. Fish, a son of the former 
distinguished Secretary of State. Mr. Fish had, in deference to 
an ancient practice, placed his position at the disposal of the new 
Administration, but, like the other persons named, he was ready 
to remain at his post if permitted to do so. All of these officers, 
save only Mr. Cramer, are citizens of New York. It was pro- 
posed to displace them all, not for any alleged fault of theirs, or 
for any alleged need or advantage of the public service, but in 
order to give the great office of Collector of the port of New 
York to Mr. William H. Robertson as a " reward " for certain 
acts of his, 'said to have " aided in making the nomination of Gen- 
eral Garfield possible." The chain of removals thus proposed 
was broken by General Badeau's promptly declining to accept the 
new place to which he was to be sent. 

CHALLENGE TO THE SENATE. 

These nominations summoned every member of the Senate to 
say on his oath whether he "advised " such a transaction. The 
movement was more than a surprise. We had been told, only a 
few hours before, that no removals in the New York offices were 
soon to be made or even considered, and had been requested to 
withhold the papers and suggestions bearing on the subject, which 
had been sent to us for presentation should occasion arise, until 
we had notice from the President of his readiness to receive 
them. Learning that the Vice-President was equally surprised, 
and had been equally misled, we went to Mr. James, the Cabinet 
officer from our State, and learned that though he had spent some 
time with the President on the morning of the day the nomina- 
tions vvere sent in, no disclosure of an intention to send them had 
been made to him, and that he first knew of the matter by hear- 
say following the event. After earnest reflection and consulta- 
tion we believed the proceeding unwise and wrong, whether con- 
sidered wholly in relation to the preservation and integrity of the 
public service and the public example to be set, or in relation 
also to the integrity of the Republican party. No public utter- 
ance of comment or censure was made by either of us in the Sen- 
ate or elsewhere; on the contrary, we thought that the President 
would reconsider an action so sudden and hasty, and would at 



640 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

least adopt less hurtful and objectionable modes of requiting per- 
sonal or individual service. 

In this hope the following paper was prepared and signed, and 
presented by Mr. James to the President, who was subsequently 
informed that you had authorized your name to be added also: 

To the President- We beg leave to remonstrate against the change in 
the Collectorship at New York by the removal of Mr. Merritt and the ap- 
pointment of Mr. Robertson. The proposal was wholly a surprise. We 
heard of it only when the several nominations involved in the plan were 
announced in the Senate. We had only two days before this been informed 
from you that a change in the Customs office at New York was not con- 
templated; and, quite ignorant of a purpose to take any action now, we had 
no opportunity, until after the nominations, to make the suggestions we 
now present. We do not believe that the interests of the public service 
will be promoted by removing the present Collector and putting Mr. 
Robertson in his stead. Our opinion is quite the reverse, and we believe 
no political advantage can be gained for either the Republican party or its 
principles. Believing that no individual has claims or obligations which 
should be liquidated in such a mode, we earnestly and respectfully ask 
that the nomination of Mr. Robertson be withdrawn. 

Chester A. Arthur. 

T. C. Platt. 

Thomas L. James. 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 

THE PROTEST OF NEW YORK. 

Immediately after the nominations were published, letters and 
telegrams in great numbers came from every part of the State, 
from its leading citizens, protesting against the proposed changes 
and condemnmg them on many grounds. Several thousands of 
the leading mercantile firms of New York — constituting, we are 
informed, a majority of every branch of trade — sent us remon- 
strances. Sixty of the eighty-one Republican members of the As- 
sembly, b}' letter or memorial, made objection. Representatives 
in Congress, State officials, business men, professional men, com- 
mercial, industrial and political organizations, are among the re- 
monstrants, and they speak from every section of the State. Be- 
sides the nominations already referred to, there were awaiting the 
action of the Senate several citizens of New York named for offi- 
ces connected with the courts, district-attorneys and marshals. 



SENATOR CONKLING OVERRULED. 64 1 

These were all reappointments. Most of them had been origi- 
nally commissioned by Mr. Hayes. They were certified by the 
judges of the courts and many other eminent persons, who attest- 
ed the faithfulness and merit of their service, and recommended 
their continuance. They were not presented by us. 

We have not attempted to '■'■dictate^' nor have we asked the nomi- 
nation of one person to any office in the State. Indeed, with the sole 
exception of the written request set forth above, we have never even 
expressed an opinion to the President in any case unless questioned 
in regard to it. 

******* 

The Legislature is in session. It is Republican in majority, 
and New York abounds in sons quite as able as we to bear her 
message and commission in the Senate of the United States. 

With a profound sense of the obligation we owe, with devotion 
to the Republican party and its creed of liberty and right, with 
reverent attachment to the great State whose interests and honor 
are dear to us, we hold it respectful and becoming to make room 
for those who may correct all the errors we have made, and inter- 
pret aright all the duties we have misconceived. 

We, therefore, inclose our resignations, but hold fast the privi- 
lege, as citizens and Republicans, to stand for the constitutional 
rights of all men, and of all representatives, whether of the States, 
the nation, or the people. 

We have the honor to be. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servants, 
roscoe conkling. 
Thomas C. Platt. 
To His Excellency Governor Cornell, Albany, N. Y. 

When Senator Conkling resigned, it was his 

intention to devote himself immediately to the 

practice of the law. Unfortunately he allowed 

himself to be overruled. Resolute as he was, and 

strong as was his will, those who knew him best 

will admit that, except on questions of right and 
41 



642 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

wrong, Mr. Conkling did not claim to be the sole 
judge of the best course to pursue in matters 
which touched the interests of friends as well as 
his own. He had the support of the great body 
of his party, but he recognized that much of this 
was due to the generous efforts of prominent in- 
dividuals throughout the State, and he conceded 
their right to a voice in all serious political move- 
ments of his own. He wished to address the 
people of the city of New York in some pub- 
lic place, that he might give them an account 
of his stewardship, and might set forth clearly 
before them the cogent reasons for his resigna- 
tion. In this he allowed himself again to be 
overruled. 

Several days later, it was arranged by the " Stal- 
warts " (as his friends were now called) that a 
conference should be held at the house of Chester 
A. Arthur, No. 123 Lexington Avenue, New York. 
The meeting occurred May 22, and the following 
persons were present : Chester A. Arthur, T. C. 
Piatt, Louis F. Payn, Charles M. Dennison, George 
H. Sharpe, John F. Smythe, A. B. Johnson and 
Roscoe Conkling. 

The conference lasted two hours, and each per- 
son was asked to pass judgment upon the future 
course of the two Senators. Each individual pres- 
ent spoke in turn. The sense of the meeting was 



OPENS A LAW-OFFICE IN NEW YORK. 643 

that the two Senators should proceed to the State 
capital.* 

The two resigning Senators accordingly went 
to Albany to watch their political fortunes. 

After the election of his successorf he returned 
quietly to New York. Here he began the practice 
of the law with most gratifying success. He was 
soon at ease, in a pecuniary sense, and he won 
without delay the high appreciation of clients, of 
his brethren of the bar and of the courts, both of 
the State and of the nation. 

* In later years Mr. Conkling often talked with one who was present 
at General Arthur's house, declaring his regret that he had yielded, against 
his own convictions, to the urgent requests of his "friends," and gone to 
Albany on that errand. 

f On July 22, 1 881, when Mr. Conkling was advised of Mr. Lapham's 
election as Senator (to succeed him), he sent the following despatch from 
New York to the Hon. James Armstrong, member of Assembly from the 
first Oneida district: 

" The heroic constancy of the Spartan band, which so long stood for 
principle and truth, has my deepest gratitude and admiration. Borne down 
by forbidden and abhorrent forces and agencies, which never before had 
sway in the Republican party, the memory of their courage and manhood 
will long live in highest honor. The near future will vindicate their wis- 
dom and crown them with approval. Please ask them all, for me, to re- 
ceive my most grateful acknowledgments." 



1850- i888. 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 

RESUME OF HIS PUBLIC CAREER — SOME ANECDOTES. 

AT OW that Senator Conkling's public career is 
ended, a review of his poUtical Hfe may be 
here given. 

In the Spring of 1850 he was appointed to fill a 
vacancy in the office of District- Attorney of Oneida 
County. At the autumnal convention he was 
nominated as his own successor without opposi- 
tion. During the next eight years he sought no 
public position with the exception of the office of 
Attorney-General, in the fall of 1853, when the 
" slate " was broken at the eleventh hour by a cor- 
rupt clique of political managers. In the spring 
of 1858 he accepted, under protest, the nomination 
for Mayor of Utica, and was easily elected. 

His friends offered him, without solicitation on 
his part, the nomination for Congress in the fol- 
lowing autumn. He was four times renominated 
without serious opposition, and thrice successful 
by a large majority. In the winter of 1867 he was, 

after five ballots in the Republican legislative cau- 

644 



HIS PUBLIC CAREER REVIEWED. 645 

cus, elected to the Senate; and in January, 1873 
and 1879, he was again chosen, having been the 
only candidate of the caucus. 

In the months of June and July, 188 1, owing to 
a collision with the Executive, and, perhaps, the 
unworthy use of money, he was defeated as his 
own successor. 

It will thus be seen that Roscoe Conkling's polit- 
ical career extends through thirty-one years, of 
which twenty were passed in both Houses of Con- 
gress. 

The writer comes now to a very important mat- 
ter — his influence on legislation. 

Strictly speaking, Senator Conkling was not an 
originator of legislative measures. In this respect 
he was like Calhoun, Webster and Seward. 

During Conkling's career he introduced but few 
bills which became laws. Of these measures, one, 
the trade-mark law, was declared unconstitutional 
by the Supreme Court of the United States. He 
had no ambition to make a record as an introducer 
of bills. In fact, comparatively few members of a 
legislative body draw up the measures which they 
offer. Such matters are frequently suggested by 
commercial bodies or manufacturers. Mr. Conk- 
ling carefully examined resolutions and bills 
before introducing them. He was often asked to 
propose amendments to the Constitution and to 



646 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

revise certain laws, but he refused to act. He was 
not an originator, but a molder of legislation. 

The author has been told by gentlemen who 
have served on committees with Senator Conk- 
ling that he was very quick to recognize defects 
in a bill. He would read it once, and then point 
out clearly to his colleagues wherein the measure 
would not work well. During his public career he 
drew very few bills. His forte was in criticising 
a measure, and suggesting changes to meet the 
needs of the people and the requirements of the 
period. Some explanation of this may be found 
in his thorough knowledge of law, and his emi- 
nently practical method of feeling the public pulse. 

His patient and steady work in the committee- 
room, which was and ever will be a sealed book to 
the world, had much to do with the perfection of 
crude measures. While in the Senate his great 
talent for analysis, and matchless eloquence, caused 
bills to become laws despite determined opposi- 
tion. Like Edmund Burke, he did not believe 
" in a blind and furious system of innovation un- 
der the name of reform." His knowledge of juris- 
prudence taught him that when an apparent 
remedy for existing evils in the shape of a bill 
was introduced, the enactment of the measure 
might work injustice to a class of persons that the 
framer never intended to reach. 



HIS INFLUENCE ON LEGISLATION. 647 

It is not too much to say that without the ef- 
ficient aid of Roscoe Conkhng on the floor of the 
Senate, many bills might have become laws, which 
would afterward have been pronounced unconsti- 
tutional by the Supreme Court, or which would 
have been injurious to some of the many com- 
plex interests of the republic. 

In his Personal Recollections, 1887, George W. 
Julian says of Mr. Conkling; " He never linked 
his name with any important principle or policy." 
If in this sentence the writer means that Roscoe 
Conkling never " named " a bill in the sense that 
the Spaulding legal - tender act, the Bland silver 
law, and the Mills tariff-reduction bijl were fa- 
thered by the introducers, he is correct. 

On the other hand, if Mr. Julian's phrase "link- 
ed his name " is to be construed as having had no 
part in shaping or passing or defeating " any im- 
portant principle or policy," he is wholly in error. 
During his entire Congressional career Mr. Conk- 
linor A^vas foremost in the consideration of bank- 
ruptcy bills. He also drafted and introduced a 
bill to provide supervisors and deputy marshals at 
elections for Congressmen, which became a law. 

The adage sic transit gloria mnndi may well be 
applied to Roscoe Conkling's legislative work. 
He did much for which he was never given credit. 
A few examples will suffice. His share in the 



648 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

struggle for Reconstruction, and in the legislation 
growing out of it, was of the most onerous char- 
acter. As Chairman of the Senate Committee 
for the Revision of the Laws, he spent many busy 
days in perfecting the federal Statutes. Yet no 
publicist has ever connected the name of Mr, 
Conkling with these measures. 

In a caucus of Republican Senators during the 
year 1876 Roscoe Conkling offered a resolution fix- 
ing January 1, 1879, for the resumption of specie pay- 
ments. It was adopted, but the Senator from Ohio 
(Mr. Sherman), who was then chairman of the 
Committee on Finance, has received credit for 
being the father of this all-important measure. 

The author may, however, go further back in Mr. 
Conkling's Congressional career. One of the lead- 
ing representatives in the Thirty-sixth Congress 
says that, although but thirty years of age, the 
hand of Roscoe Conkling was seen in the legisla- 
tion of that period. In January, 1862, he rose to 
a question of privilege on the floor of the House 
of Representatives, and offered an original resolu- 
tion calling the War Department to account for 
refusing to furnish information concerning the 
slaughter of Union troops at the battle of Ball's 
Bluff. The resolution was adopted, and it required 
a brave man to come into collision with that de- 
partment in those days. 



RETROSPECT— REPUTATION. 649 

During the greater part of President Grant's 
administration, Senator Conkling was to a large 
extent the power behind the throne. He advised 
General Grant to veto the " Inflation " bill in April, 
1874. 

In his eloquent defence of General Sheridan, in 
January, 1875, he foreshadowed the subsequent 
Southern policy of the President. After leaving 
the White House, General Grant said to a relative 
of the biographer, " For the ability to seize and 
solve problems of State, Roscoe Conkling has had 
no equal in this country." 

The Senator who introduced the bill to estab- 
lish the " Electoral Commission" of 1877, states in 
a letter to the author that "his (Conkling's) pow- 
erful aid " enabled this measure to become a law. 

It may be said that during his last seven years 
in the Senate (1874-1881) no other member of 
that body has, since the time of Webster and Clay, 
exercised so much influence on legislation. 

The biographer has thus dwelt at some length 
upon this portion of Roscoe Conkling's career for 
the reason that he should be given his proper place 
in the legislative history of the United States. 

A man will, in the long run, show what he is 
by what he does, and the motives which influence 
him as a man will, nevertheless, influence him as 
a law-maker. 



650 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

The following article from the Daily Graphic, 
August I, 1878, concerning "Senator Conkling as 
a Statesman," may be considered an index of pub- 
lic sentiment : 

* * * We may roughly characterize all those persons as 
statesmen who, whether in or out of ofiface, or whether seeking or 
avoiding office, aim directly or indirectly at leading and guiding 
a people, either through administration, legislation, or discussion. 
And we may say that, excluding mere administrators, all states- 
men — all political leaders — fall roughly into three classes: 

1. Men of a cause, advocates of an idea — unpopular, very 
likely; in a word, doctrinaire pioneers to search out the road for 
the great mob of leaders and people. 

2. Men of affairs — the men of action and execution, who 
extract all the honey that the doctrinaire bee has gathered, and 
who sometimes kill the bee in the operation. These men are like 
the inventors who turn the abstract principles of the philosophers 
to practical use. They are the real leaders of men who are 
never with the mass of the people, nor so far ahead of them that 
they cannot be seen. 

3. Men of expression, of explanation and diction — the elo- 
quent commentators on and expounders of accomplished facts 
and realized political theories. 

Of the first class our history contains a great number. All 
the anti-slavery agitators belonged to it. Ahead of their time, in 
one sense, they formed the public opinion of which the construct- 
ive statesmen of the second class took advantage when the time 
was ripe. * * * 

Of the second class, perhaps Henry Clay is the most promi- 
nent example in the public mind. His great qualities as a leader 
— a kind of phonograph which caught up and intensified and gave 
voice to the feeling of the time — is still a controlling tradition in 
politics. But nearly all our great statesmen belonged to this 
class. * * * 

At the head of the third class — a position which he will, in all 
human probability, always retain — stands Daniel Webster, the 



HIS WORK IN COMMITTEE-ROOMS. 65 I 

expounder par excellence. And in my opinion Roscoe Conkling 
belongs to the same class. He is a commentator, not an originator 
or adapter — a man to express in fit words the thought that a thou- 
sand persons before him had uttered in words not so fit. Senator 
Conkling is not the man to make a political creed; he is not the 7nan 
to seize upon certain ideas floating in the public mind and give them 
firmness and consistency; he is not the tnan to rally a party to their 
support, nor yet to place himself in any untried position. But he is 
the great and dignified Senator to expound and defend political 
creeds, and to lead parties to the support of known and acknowledged 
causes and leaders. * * * 

One who would well know Mr. Conkling's career 
must not only examine the record of the debates 
during his twenty years of service in Congress, 
but must hear the testimony of his associates with 
whom he shared the unrecorded toil of the com- 
mittee-room. Much of the most important work 
of public men is done there, beyond the public 
view, where measures are scrutinized, and where 
reports are prepared to prove their propriety and 
necessity. The names of the leading committees 
upon which Mr. Conkling served have already 
been stated, and he sometimes worked, as some 
other Senators did, through the night until the 
rays of the rising sun brightened his committee- 
room. Mr. Conkling may now be considered as 
a public man. 

Few men in official life have been so systematical- 
ly misrepresented. The public read of him chiefly 
through that portion of the press that was uniformly 



652 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

hostile to him; and from such sources there was, of 
course, no recognition of the virtues and the distin- 
guished pubHc services which, at the end, made him 
widely and favorably known to every class of men. 

Seven years of private life augmented rather 
than lessened the public interest in him. Although 
out of the stream of politics, and with no intention 
of again engaging in partisan contests, his influ- 
ence was felt and his power feared. 

After his resignation from the Senate he pre- 
served a dignified silence, and never again publicly 
referred to the causes which led to his political re- 
tirement. He would not contend for the good 
opinion of any one, nor did he seek applause dur- 
mg his public addresses ; yet he was glad to earn 
the approbation of his fellow-men. He was the 
very embodiment of duty and truth, and was al- 
ways opposed to shams. He enjoyed honest oppo- 
sition, but with hypocrites he had no patience. 
His magnificent contempt was reserved for mean- 
ness and false pretensions. 

Few men were more considerate of the feelings 
of others. This trait of his character was notice- 
able when persons in the humble walks of life 
came to him and appeared diffident and unable 
clearly to state their business. He promptly put 
them at ease, not by condescension, but by the 
skilful exercise of that kindness without which 



HIS CHARACTERISTICS. 653 

no man, however cultivated, can be considered a 
gentleman. It was often said that he was haughty 
and overbearing, but he was not. He had a very- 
sensitive, nervous temperament, and when he was 
overworked or worried he had the human infirm- 
ity of impatience and irritability. He had a pow- 
erful will, and would not be swerved from a course 
of action which he had decided to carry out. 

He had great independence of judgment, and 
respected that of others. Although of very strong 
convictions, he was not too positive in his own 
opinions — at least he always admitted that he 
might be mistaken, but he rarely erred in making 
a statement. 

He had great courage, both moral and physical. 
This was often shown in his public denunciations 
of slavery, of force and fraud at the ballot-box, 
and of the oppression of negroes in the South. He 
ignored danger and the risk of personal injury if 
they lay in his path. To give an example, it may 
be said that he was once traveling on a train from 
Washington to New York when an intoxicated 
passenger took the seat which he had temporarily 
vacated, and which contained his luggage. He 
asked the conductor to notify the intruder that the 
place was wanted, when the former stated that the 
drunken man was armed, and he hesitated to re- 
move him. "Then," replied Mr. Conkling, " if that 



654 ^^^^ ^^-^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

is the case, let me deal with him." He lifted him 
by the shoulders, and carrying him to another 
seat said, " Sit there, sir!" 

He was not a tuft-hunter. He valued his 
wealthy no more than his most humble friends, 
and rated them upon the basis of their capacity to 
make themselves agreeable. He was very grate- 
ful for acts of kindness or assistance rendered 
him, and whoever had once done him a favor had 
forever after a claim upon his gratitude. Those 
who did not know Mr. Conkling intimately 
thought he was reserved and unapproachable. 
When he had work (either political or profes- 
sional) to be done, he would not give himself up 
to idle conversations; but when his engagements 
would permit he cheerfully devoted an evening 
to friends, and for hours indulged in familiar 
talk, oftentimes leading his hearers in both wit 
and wisdom. 

Many men, who were inclined to be hostile, be- 
came his admirers after making his acquaintance. 
He loved his friends warmly, and often referred 
to them in conversation. Concerninof them he 
would listen to no harsh criticism ; and in a few 
cases during his latter years he refused to heed the 
advice of members of his family regarding the dis- 
solution of undesirable ties of friendship. Those 
who were his friends in prosperity remained such 



NOT A SPOILSMAN. 655 

when overtaken by adversity. He never betrayed 
one, but he was betrayed by many. 

In summing up Mr. ConkUng's poUtical career, 
the careful observer is struck by the fact that he 
did not depend upon patronage for his position to 
make him popular as a leader. 

Out of fourteen years in the Senate, eight were 
passed in an indifferent if not a hostile attitude 
toward the (Republican) President. 

During his thirty years of public life Mr. Conk- 
ling had but one relative appointed to office. This 
kinsman served during fifteen months as assistant 
United States Attorney for the Southern District 

of New York. 

The following letter explains itself. 

New York, January 31, 1889. 

MYDEARMR.C0NKLING-* * * The appointments made 

bv me on Senator Conkling's request numbered four (perhaps 

five) * * * This was during my eight years as Postmaster. 

The Senator never was a place-hunter, nor was he in any sense 

a spoilsman. Very truly yours, 

Thos. L. James. 
Alfred R. Conkling, Esq. 

The following letter gives further testimony on 

this subject. 

New York, May n, 1888. 
Hon. A. R. Conkling: 

My Dear Sir: Your letter of May 7th is received, in which 
you ask me to put in wnting the statement I made to you some 
days ago in reference to the number of times which your uncle, 



656 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the late Roscoe Conkling, made application for the appointment 
of his personal friends to office during the administration of Gen- 
eral Grant. Of course I can only tell you what my father and 
Senator Conkling have said to me upon this subject. 

Some time ago, but after my father left the Executive Man- 
sion, we were talking upon the subject of Presidential appoint- 
ments, and how they were made. He told me, that while he was 
President he had adopted the three following methods. First: 
He appointed anyone whom he especially desired as his own per- 
sonal appointment. Second: When a Senator or Representative 
wished a personal friend appointed, he generally granted their 
wish. This was especially the case for postmasterships of the 
cities or towns from which the Senator or Representative came. 
Third: The great majority of his appointments were made from 
a list of those recommended to him by the State delegations (Sena- 
tors and Congressmen). I asked my father if Senator Conkling 
obtained many places for personal friends. My father replied, No; 
Senator Conkling had never asked him for one appointment dur- 
ing his Presidency. 

I afterwards repeated the above to Senator Conkling, and he 
told me that he had written one letter, and one only, asking for a 
personal appointment — that of Colonel J. Schuyler Crosby. * * * 

Hoping that the above covers what you desire, and assuring 
you of my deep interest in the book you are preparing, I remain, 

Cordially yours, 

F. D. Grant. 

In his brief life of Mr. Conkling, James P. Boyd 
says " he had a character which has been per- 
sistently misunderstood, unnecessarily, not to 
say wilfully, depreciated, and which was always 
too ' far from the madding crowd ' and too ex- 
alted by nature to tender apology, proffer explana- 
tion, or seek vindication." 

With no man could these words be truer than 



MS. CUMMINGS'S REMINISCENCES. 657 

with General Garfield, whose untimely and dis- 
astrous death forever closed the lips of Mr. Conk- 
ling. He then said, " My lips are sealed; I cannot 
go into a grave for vindication." 

Wishing to evade the strangers and place- 
seekers, Senator Conkling oftentimes walked to 
the Capitol on Sundays, in order to secure some 
freedom from constant interruption. 

Concerning Senator Conkling, Mr. Amos J. 
Cummings gives the following reminiscences m 
the New York Sun. 

His championship of the Grant administration, and his match- 
less tilts with Schurz and Sumner over the French arms expose 
made hmr more conspicuous than he had ever been before. I 
was ust after this debate that I l^rst met him. I had been sen 
o nteview him. I had formed a dislike toward h„n from what 
I had read in the newspapers concerning his turkey-cock d.spos,- 
ion I sent my card to his room in a Philadelphia hotel, and 
: invit:d up-slairs. He greeted me very courteously, assurmg 
me that he knew me well by reputation, and alked with me 
"eels He concluded by asking me not to use h,s name m de- 
tl ling the information I had received. Without the use of his 
tailmg tne „ „,,„p,.„ i tried to induce him to change 

name it was almost valueless. 1 rricu 

his mind but he was firm set, and his name was no used. Theie 
was an indescribable charm about his manner. I -var saw a 
Tan so sociable and yet so dignified. He made ™e perfectly a 
ease from the time I entered his room. He did most of the ta k 
ing himself, and he found a good listener. When I took my 1 ave 
he accompanied me to the door, and even went as f- - ' ^ J^^^' 
of the stairway, saying " Good night " in the cheeiiest tones as 

"TnS :::: rconkimg m the Rochester Convei^o-;-^: 
he met George William Curtis in debate. It was the famous 



42 



658 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

carpet-knight man-milliner speech. * * * He was dressed with 
scrupulous neatness. He stood with head erect and shoulders 
thrown back, a Saul among Republican politicians. The imperial 
curl danced above his broad forehead, and his Venetian beard was 
as pointed as his nose. His eyes were blue and flashing, his voice 
was remarkably sonorous, and his gestures were natural and grace- 
ful. It was probably the most remarkable speech of his life. The 
most of the ideas were evidently preconceived. He had appar- 
ently expected the encounter and was prepared for it. He was 
spurred to the highest point of vehemence. Curtis had stung 
his dignity, and there was nothing that would fire Conkling with 
sarcasm as quick as this. He carried the day by sheer force of 
eloquence and animal magnetism. 

Mr. Conkling has been called " a good hater." 
It is true ; but he was also a steadfast friend. It 
is not too much to say that no man in the United 
States ever espoused more warmly the cause of a 
friend than did Senator Conkling in his champion- 
ship of President Grant. 

The New York Tablet of May 5, 1888, published 
the following : 

Roscoc Conkling had an exceedingly genial way in dealing 
with reporters who were known to him. He was always happy 
and pleasant in his manners, frankly told them what they wanted 
to know, but invariably wound up the interview by resting his 
white hand on the reporter's shoulder and saying : ** You will 
please to remember, my friend, that I have not said anything for 
publication." Then he would explain how publicity might hamper 
him in his legal cases. His confidence was always respected. 
Since he established himself in New York he was frequently 
called out of bed long after midnight in response to a reporter's 
call. Even at that hour he was genial, witty and obliging, as far 
as he could be. A short time ago a reporter told him that he 
would like above all things to print some of the interesting con' 



TWO QUAINT ANECDOTES. 659 

fidential chats he had had with him. The reporter dilated on the 
avidity with which newspaper readers would read such matter. 
The Senator only smiled and said: "Wait till after my death, 
my friend ; wait till I am dead." 

Just before his death the following item ran the 

rounds of the public journals : 

Roscoe Conkling, according to a current newspaper item, when 
spoken to the other day about the possibility of his being the Re- 
publican candidate for the Presidency, remarked : " My dear sir, 
that is sheer nonsense! Why, you might as well set a corpse up 
in a window to look at a funeral procession go by as to nommate 
me for the office of President of the United States!" 

To a correspondent who asked Mr. Conkling for 
some expressions on political questions a few years 
ago he wrote a letter in which he said : 

When the Persian embassy was about to take leave of the 
Grecian Court, in olden time, they asked and received some mes- 
sage of the personages present. When the turn of Zeno came, he 
said : "Tell your master that you saw a gray-haired old man m 
Athens who knew enough to hold his tongue." 

Please ascribe to my admiration for Zeno and his teachmgs 
my silence touching your forecast of my action m the politics of 
the future. 

The following two characteristic stories of Mr. 
Conkling were published in a San Francisco news- 
paper in the spring of 1888: 

Dwight Lawrence, especially during the period of ex-Governor 
A B Cornell's chairmanship of the Republican State Committee, 
came into close relationship with Roscoe Conkling. He tells 
some stories of occurrences that grew out of this acquaintance. 
On one occasion he was sent to Newark to ask Mr. Freling- 
huysen to come to New York to make a speech. He drove out 



66o LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

to Mr. Frelinghuy sen's house, where he was met by a point- 
blank refusal. " It is a matter not only of great regret to me that 
you refuse," said Mr. Lawrence in his blandest tone, " but also of 
positive and serious personal inconvenience and annoyance." 

"Why, how can that be? " asked Mr. Frelinghuysen. 

"Well, sir," replied Lawrence, " I always obey orders. Sena- 
tor Conkling told me to get a team and drive out here after you, 
and not to come back until you should come with me. I shall 
be obliged to drive around here until you change your mind." 
Mr. Frelinghuysen laughed, changed his mind at once, and was 
soon on his way to New York. 

At a later date Mr. Lawrence went to Utica to ask Mr. Conk- 
ling to go to Philadelphia to make a speech. Mr. Conkling was 
resolutely opposed to going. Mr. Lawrence told his story of his 
experience with Mr. Frelinghuysen. It set Mr. Conkling to laugh- 
ing, and he finally acceded to the request. 

This Philadelphia meeting, which was addressed by Mr. Conk- 
ling, was one of the notable political gatherings of the Quaker City, 
and is still remembered there. Many citizens came to hear Mr. 
Conkling in dress suits, accompanied by their wives in full evening 
dress. The Opera-House looked more like an audience assembled 
to hear Italian opera than to listen to a political speech. As Sen- 
ator Conkling was finishing his dinner at the hotel. Senator Don 
Cameron came to see him, in full evening dress. Senator Conk- 
ling had on a business suit of pepper and salt woolen goods. There 
were a number of New Yorkers and Philadelphians at the table. 

"Don't you want to be excused for a few minutes. Senator, 
to get on your other suit?" asked Mr. Cameron. 

Mr. Conkling stared at Mr. Cameron as if he did not quite un- 
derstand, and finally, as if half-comprehending, stood up, and 
looking down over his manly figure, said: 

" This is all the suit I have here. You don't mean to say 
that they will expect me to appear in evening dress? " 

When it was explained to him that this was the expectation of 
Philadelphia political audiences, he replied: 

" Well, I think they'll have to take me as I am. Why, in my 
State, if I should appear before a political audience in a dress 
suit, I should expect to be mobbed! " 



SOME ANECDOTES. 66 1 

Senator Conkling had a very high, nervous tem- 
perament. He could not bear to have a person 
put his foot upon the round of his chair. He often 
feared he would lose his case in court when thus 
troubled by an ill-bred neighbor. 

Freeman Thorpe, an artist in Findlay, Ohio, 
says in a letter to a friend of Mr. Conkling: 

I once hurt Senator Conkling cruelly while going out hastily 
through the swinging doors of the Senate chamber just as he was 
coming in. Of course it was an accident, but he bore the pain with 
so much politeness and freedom from even momentary irritation or 
resentment that it completely won my admiration, and afterward, 
when I knew him and comprehended his grand qualities, I con- 
sidered him one of the grandest figures in American public life. 

The following anecdote appeared in the New 
York Mail and Express during his fatal illness: 

An old telegraph operator says: Years ago I was employed 
by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad at the 
junction a few miles out of Baltimore. One afternoon an unusu- 
ally handsome and athletic man entered the little station. " Does 
the limited express for Washington stop here?" he inquired. 
" No, sir," I replied. " Can you stop it ? " " Not without orders 
from the main office." "I will explain my situation to you," 
said the stranger, '' in the hope that you will do all in your power 
to aid me. I came from Washington to intercept at Baltimore a 
gentleman who is on his way from New York to the Capital. He 
is on the limited express. It is of the greatest importance I should 
see him before he reaches Washington. A railway conductor 
directed me to the Union Station, where he said the limited would 
stop, but I lost my way and wandered here after a long tramp." 
Telling him I would see what I could do for him, I telegraphed 
to Philadelphia for permission to stop the express. "You might 
use my name if you think it would be of any use," said the gen- 



662 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

tleman. "And your name is — ?" said I. " Conkling — Roscoe 
Conkling," replied the gentleman. I flashed over the wire, 
" Senator Conkling wants me to stop the limited express for him 
to get aboard." The answer came back, *' How do you know it 
is Conkling?" Turning to him I said, "Philadelphia wants 
identification." ''Will this do? "he asked, displaying a hand- 
some gold watch with the initials *'R. C." engraved on the case. 
At the same time, either by design or chance, he removed his hat. 
Grasping the key I ticked these words to Philadelphia: "Letters 
*R. C on gentleman's watch, but I know he's Conkling by_his 
flaunting red beard and the Hyperion curl of Nast's cartoons." 
Straightway the sounder rapped, " Stop train, by order H. F. 
Kenney, General Superintendent." Conkling was profuse in his 
thanks. As the express shot around the curve with him safely 
on board, he made a courteous gesture of farewell to me. 

Thomas Corwin and Mr. Conkling were very- 
friendly, and they had what may be called bonds 
of oratory and poetry between them. 

During the summer recess of Congress, Messrs. 
Conkling and Corwin once met on one of the 
Ohio River steamboats. The night was warm, 
and the state-rooms were too close for comfort 
during the early part of the evening. They sat 
together on deck and entered into a poetic " duel," 
i. e., each challenged the other to quote poetry. 
Mr. Conkling was very fond of the poets, and his 
memory had been cultivated in that direction. In 
early life, at his father's house in Albany, his 
brothers and sisters would often in the evening 
gather around a table and see who could recite 
the greatest number of verses beginning with the 



A POETIC DUEL. 663 

letter A., and so going through the alphabet. 
Among other things, Mr. Corwin challenged Mr. 
Conkling to describe death in a poem. The latter, 
being very young and of such strong frame, never 
contemplated that subject, and replied that he 
knew but little of funeral poetry. Pausing a while 
he mused, and then recited the five verses of Mrs. 
Barbauld's hymn beginning- 
How blest the righteous when he dies, 
When sinks a weary soul to rest! 
How mildly beam the closing eyes, 
How gently heaves th' expiring breast! 

Mr. Corwin in reply repeated the following lines 
from Sir Walter Scott's Rokeby : 

And now, my race of terror run, 
Mine be the eve of tropic sun ! 
No pale gradations quench his ray, 
No twilight dews his wrath allay ; 
With disk like battle-target red, 
He rushes to his burning bed, 
Dyes the wide wave with bloody light, 
Then sinks at once— and all is night. 

Mr. Conkling fortunately had committed to 
memory much of Mr. Corwin's famous - bloody 
hand " speech on the Mexican War. He paid his 
friend the compliment of reciting several pages 

of it. 

These gentlemen were so much absorbed by 
their poetic combat that they lingered on deck till 



664 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the dawn ; and even then the conversation was so 
engrossing that they did not part until driven be- 
low by the scorching sun, which was rapidly rising 
above the trees on the bank of the Ohio River. 

Mr. Conkling once asked one of his Senatorial 
friends: "Which is the most important letter in 
the English language ?" On the other's answering, 
"I give it up," Mr. Conkling said, "The letter 
* O '." He then slowly recited the last two lines 
of a favorite poem — The Latnent of the Captive, by 
Richard Henry Wilde, viz., 

On that 1-o-n-e shore loud m-o-a-n-s the sea, 
And n-o-n-e, alas ! shall mourn for me ! 

of which the concluding verse is : 

My life is like the prints which feet 

Have left on Tampa's desert strand ; 
Soon as the rising tide shall beat, 

All trace will vanish from the sand ; 
Yet, as if grieving to efface 

All vestige of the human race, 
On that lone sJiore loud moans the sea, 

But none, alas ! shall mourn for tne ! 

The Washington correspondent of the New 
York Tribune has lately published the following 
story of Mr. Conkling : 

There is in Washington a cripple who earns a meagre living 
by peddling news among the regular correspondents. In the last 
Presidential campaign he saw Mr, Conkling at Chamberlain's and 
asked him for an interview. Mr. Conkling replied, with his usual 
abruptness, that he never permitted himself to be interviewed ; 



HIS KIND HEART. 665 

that he was out of politics, and nothing he could say would be of 
the slightest interest to the public. 

*' You are mistaken about that, Senator," was the reply of the 
cripple. " If I could get a good interview with you it would be 
$25 or $30 in my pocket Every correspondent on the 'row' 
would buy it of me." 

" Do you want to make that amount of money ?" asked the 
Senator. 

'*I do, indeed," was the reply. "Things are pretty dull in 
Washington now." 

" Very well," said Mr. Conkling, " I will give you an interview, 
although I have not done such a thing for a long time, and have 
frequently declared that I would never talk with a reporter again." 

Inviting the cripple to his room, Mr. Conkling called for a pen 
and paper and wrote out his views on the political contest, which 
were widely published, and attracted a great deal of comment at 
the time. As he finished he handed the manuscript to the cripple 
and said : " There is your interview ; and I have only two con- 
ditions to make : one is that you sell it for the very highest pos- 
sible price to as many newspapers as possible, and the other is 
that it be printed exactly as it is written." 

The following anecdote of Mr. Conkling was 
given by a citizen of Utica to the author for pub- 
lication : 

Roscoe Conkling had some traits of amiability and frolicsome 
joyousness that are common enough, yet, in a person so exalted 
as he was, are well worthy of notice in a general way, for he was 
a very boy in feeling and action when surrounded by those he de- 
lighted to entertain. I remember on one occasion at a symposium, 
when the ice was brought in he looked at it askance and saw it 
was too coarse, whereupon he said to the attendant : " Bring in a 
large napkin." The attendant did so. Mr. Conkling spread the 
napkin, put in it the larger lumps, then gathering the whole into a 
slung-shot shape, he began to chuckle, and said : " Here's a di- 
lemma. Never mind, B.'s head is hard enough ;" but turning 
quick as thought, he threw up the window and thrashed the ice on 



666 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

the stone sill till he had reduced the mass to the required granula- 
tion. Then, after imbibition, he entertained the company with the 
most jocund fun that I ever listened to. It did not matter, on such 
occasions, whether one or ten were sitting with him, he was equally 
exuberant and inspiring. I think, however, that I never saw him 
so hilarious as he was on the occasion of his reception when he 
returned from Europe. It was about eleven o'clock p. m., after 
all the hard work of talking an hour or more from the porch of 
his home to the assembled thousands, and another hour of hand- 
shaking with them, when he came into the house, where a large 
company awaited him, his face as fresh and radiant as that of a 
youth come to a Christmas holiday ; and then the fun began as 
he passed around and quizzed those with whom he was most 
familiar. Wine was brought in, but the servants were slow at un- 
bottling; this he saw, and went at once to the baskets and un- 
corked bottle after bottle, himself serving his friends with wine. 
With repartee and joke he kept up the fun without showing the 
least sign of weariness. On the contrary, the parting shots he 
gave in the hall in dismissal at a " few short hours ayant the 
twal " were the best of all, and drew from the retreating crowd 
most hearty shouts of laughter. 

Soon after Mr. Conkling's political retirement 
he became the counsel of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad Company. He went occasionally to 
Washington on professional business, and once 
visited the Department of the Interior in behalf 
of the above-named company. One of the depart- 
mental clerks gives the following reminiscence of 
the ex-Senator: 

One day I was sent for by the Secretary of the Interior to 
come to the room of his private secretary, and make out a few 
commissions. They were appointments of commissioners to ex- 
amine and report upon a completed section of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad in Washington Territory. I was attached to the 



A CLERK'S REMINISCENCE. 667 

appointment division of tlie Secretary's office, and usually did the 
writing upon these parchments. Arrived at the ante-room, I 
found a very pleasant and polite gentleman, who seemed inter- 
ested in the appointments, and who remained seated near me at 
the desk. We were together nearly an hour, during which I tried 
to be as civil as he was, and had several opportunities to offer him 
slight courtesies. 

The work was rather tedious, as it required careful engrossing 
to be able to get a lengthy title into a small space. He seemed 
struck with my lettering — which had to be very small — and com- 
plimented me several times on the neatness of the execution. At 
the end of an hour he left the room, and went to another part of 
the building, where he was engaged several hours longer. When 
I had completed the work and was about leaving for the day, my 
civil friend made his appearance, hat and umbrella in hand, and 
said, " I have come to bid you good-bye, and thank you for your 
politeness." Whereupon he shook my hand heartily, and left the 
apartment. ''Who was that ? " I asked of the messenger outside. 
" That ! why, don't you know him ? It's Roscoe Conkling ! " was 
the reply. 



/ 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

MR. CONKLING AS A LAWYER IN NEW YORK. 

AT OW that Roscoe Conkling is numbered with 
the silent majority, an examination of his 
merits and abiUty as an advocate and counselor 
at law will be in place. 

His career was a twofold one. He was both a 
lawyer and a statesman. He was less conspicu- 
ous as an advocate only for the reason that his 
greater reputation in both Houses of Congress had 
given him a wider reputation than could have 
been secured in the narrower arena of the court- 
room. Yet in all these places he was equally in 
his sphere and equally great. If his audiences at 
the bar had been as large as they were in the 
Houses of Congress and the political forum, he 
would have been no less distinguished as a lawyer 
than he was as a parliamentary debater and ora- 
tor. Unfortunately, too few of his numerous ar- 
guments in the court-room have been preserved. 
The biographer has found but one before the year 

668 



EXPOSES FRAUD AND CORRUPTION. 669 

1874. It has been already given, namely: the 
"summing up" in the theological libel suit of 
Sawyer against Van Wyck (see Chapter XII). 

Mr. Conkling's life was largely employed in ex- 
posures of fraudulent and corrupt transactions. 
Prominent among these were the Haddock court- 
martial in 1865, the re-organization of the Repub- 
lican party in the city of New York in 1871, his 
arraignment of the Tweed Ring, the suit of Marie 
et al. against Garrison, and the investigation of the 
Broadway Railroad Company. He had a consti- 
tutional antipathy for sycophants, cowards, hypo- 
crites and corruptionists. So marked was his 
reputation that when he entered the court-room 
the fact was announced in the newspapers. None 
of his professional brothers were ever so noticed. 
The most trivial circumstance relating to Mr. 
Conkling was considered as important enough to 
record in the daily journals. 

From 1867 to 1881 Mr. Conkling was but little 
employed in professional work. The greater part 
of each year was occupied with Senatorial duty ; 
and during the recesses of Congress he rarely 
tried a cause. In the political campaigns he placed 
his time at the disposal of the Republican State 
and National Committees. If he had devoted 
himself to the bar from his youth without engag- 
ing actively in politics, he might have been the 



670 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

rival, as an advocate and counselor, of such men 
as Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Daniel Cady, 
Luther Martin and Charles O'Conor. Several of 
the obituary notices of Mr. Conkling defined his 
strong points as consisting of cross-examination 
and in addressing the jury.* The lawyers in the 
metropolis, however, who knew him best declare 
that he was well versed in the principles of law, 
and very familiar with equity jurisprudence. In 
presenting points to the Court, and in the applica- 
tion of the rules of evidence, he was powerful. He 
had quick reasoning faculty and was able at once 
to form correct conclusions. With sufficient time 
for preparation, no lawyer surpassed him in the 
analysis and clear presentation of his case. He 
stated his facts with great force and eloquence. 
He was also habitually disposed to elaborate 
adornment of his style. 

Upon constitutional questions he was an ac- 
knowledged authority. His long term of service 
in both Houses of Congress made him very familiar 
with the federal statutes. 

He entered upon the practice of his profession 
in the metropolis under circumstances the most 
discouraging. New York abounded with lawyers 

* Witnesses dreaded his cross-examination. In 1885 a chemical ex- 
pert who was soon to be cross-examined as a witness by Mr. Conkling 
came to the author and said, " Tell the ex-Senator not to be too hard on 
me while I am on the stand." 



HIS FIRST CLIENT. 67 1 

of merit and ability who had not been able to 
earn a livelihood. Mr. Conkling had left the Senate 
broken in health and deeply embarrassed pecuni- 
arily. It might be long before he would be able 
to give himself a place among the eminent coun- 
selors of the New York bar. 

Under such disheartening conditions, in No- 
vember, 1 88 1, Roscoe Conkling opened an office 
in two small rooms at No. 31 Nassau Street. 

The first person who came to see him on business 
was Mr. Jay Gould, who waited upon him early 
one morning at his hotel. Soon after came Thom- 
as A. Edison, the inventor. 

Indeed, he had been confident from the first, 
that if he regained his strength, that he would 
achieve a successful career. Nor did he proceed 
without a fixed plan. His purpose was to act as 
counsel in trying and arguing cases for other law- 
yers, and he adhered to it with a few exceptions 
where he appeared as attorney of record. He re- 
ceived several very favorable proposals to enter 
into partnership, but declined them all. Probably 
he thus secured a greater income than his share 
would have been in the receipts of a large firm. 
His rooms were upon the third floor, next the office 
of Messrs. Blatchford, Seward, Griswold & Da 
Costa. Mr. Clarence A. Seward, the head of the 
firm, was an old friend ; and at his advice Mr. 



6/2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Conkling had been induced to take these rooms for 
the time, till his health should improve. Indeed, 
many of his friends were apprehensive that he 
would not regain his usual strength. For months 
he was not able to do much work. He would 
come daily to his office, and then was obliged to 
decline business because of his inability to perform 
it. This was very distressing to him, for he was 
in actual need of the money. He was too con- 
scientious, however, to accept retainers unless 
confident of being able to render the stipulated 
service. 

In the afternoons he would go up-town, walking 
incessantly, in the hope that the exercise might 
enable him to eat and sleep. He disliked to ride, 
especially upon the elevated railroad. The curi- 
osity of other passengers was an intolerable annoy- 
ance. Friendly strangers, also, were carefully 
watchful, lest some enemy should do him injury. 
That year President Garfield had died from such 
a cause, and his assailant was awaiting his trial. 
Perhaps some one of like character would seek 
revenge on the man whom the President had 
offended. Mr. vJonkling himself feared nothing ; 
time, he declared, would straighten all things. 
No man walked the streets of New York who 
was more respected than Roscoe Conkling. 

In the autumn of 1882 he opened an office in 



LEGAL CONSULTATIONS. 673 

the United Bank Building, at the corner of Wall 
Street and Broadway. To that office he removed 
his law books from Utica. Till this time Mr. Sew- 
ard had permitted him the free use of his library. 
About the same time Mr. Conkling left his rooms 
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and engaged others 
in West Twenty-ninth Street, next the building of 
the Bar Association. Here he might be found at 
night studying some intricate legal question, un» 
less he was at his office in consultation with cli- 
ents. He in this way procured much business 
from being accessible in the evenings. Lawyers 
and others too much engaged during the daytime 
could rely upon finding him at his rooms or in the 
library of the Bar Association. 

His wide experience in public affairs was of far 
greater value to him than if he had been, during 
the previous quarter of a century, confined to the 
ordinary routine of practice. His advice was 
sought in matters of importance, which, neverthe* 
less, were not in litigation. 

The cases which he argued in the courts were 

always important ones. The plan which he had 

adopted, of acting only as counsel, necessarily 

caused only the difficult cases to be brought to 

him. Lawyers would of course employ him only 

when they needed his superior ability. At first 

he accepted " general retainers." He soon noticed, 
43 



674 ^/-^•£' AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

however, that the persons giving them did so in 
order to prevent him from appearing on the other 
side, and employed their favorite lawyers to man- 
age the suits. He at once discontinued the prac- 
tice, remarking that he did not propose to have his 
guns spiked in that way. 

Bwsiness now came to him from unexpected 
quarters — from absolute strangers, from persons 
opposed to him politically, from pronounced 
Democrats. The most gratifying fact in his ex- 
perience at the bar was the confidence and respect 
shown him by the Democratic judges in New 
York. He used to remark that they were not 
afraid to decide in his favor when they thought 
him right, nor to oppose him when they thought 
him wrong. 

He made a specialty of no class of cases. As 
occasion required he appeared in all the courts. In 
railroad litigation and in suits growing out of 
large financial transactions he did a large busi- 
ness. In patent causes also he had an extended 
practice, which frequently required his presence 
at Chicago, Washington, Boston and other distant 
points. Wherever he went the court-rooms were 
crowded with a multitude eager to hear him. He 
often appeared before the Commissioner of Patents 
at Washington, and on these occasions many of the 
clerks deserted their desks to hear his arguments. 



MR. JUSTICE MILLER'S OPINION. 675 

The last cause that he had argued in the United 
States Supreme Court, before he resigned from 
the Senate, was that of the Pacific Mail Steamship 
Company vs. the United States in the winter of 
1 88 1. The plaintiff had a contract to carry for 
ten years the mails from San Francisco to China 
and Japan for $500,000 per annum. The Post- 
master-General and the Court of Claims had both 
decided against the Company. At this juncture 
Mr. Conkling was retained by the plaintiff. 

No other comment is necessary than the fol- 
lowing allusion by Mr. Justice Miller (who ren- 
dered the decision) in speaking of this case after 
his death : 

It gives me pleasure to say that I knew Mr. Conkling quite 
well during the whole period of his life in both branches of Con- 
gress. * * * He had occasional cases in our court from his 
earliest entrance upon his Congressional career. * * * 

One of the most important cases that I ever heard Mr. Conk- 
ling argue displayed in a remarkable degree his tact, skill and 
ability as a lawyer. It was the case of the Pacific Mail Steam- 
ship Company vs. United States, reported in 103 U. S., 721. It 
involved nearly a million of dollars, which was claimed by the 
Steamship Company for carrying mail, under contract with the 
United States, from San Francisco to Yokohama. The Post- 
Ofifice Department and the Court of Claims had rejected the 
claim of the Company on the ground that mail had not been car- 
ried in the class of vessels which the acts of Congress and the 
contract required, viz., that they should be such vessels as could 
be converted into war vessels for the navy. 

Until the closing argument made by Mr. Conkling it seemed 
to me, and I think to most of the court, that the Court of Claims 



676 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

was right. But Mr. Conkling, in his most masterly analysis of 
the acts of Congress on this subject, and of the two contracts 
made by the Postmaster-General with the Steamship Company, 
demonstrated so clearly that the vessels furnished by the Com- 
pany for carrying the mails which had met the approval of the 
Postmaster-General were in substantial accord both with the re- 
quirements of the acts of Congress and with the contracts, that 
the opinion of the court was unanimous in reversing the judg- 
ment of the Court of Claims, and allowing the Company all that 
it had claimed except one trip, which had been performed in a 
substituted vessel not of the proper character. I have always 
thought it was a remarkable evidence of legal skill and ability. 
I do not mention it as a case standing alone, for Mr. Conkling, 
to my surprise, instead of relying, as many men do, upon his 
natural ability as an orator and his quick perception of the 
points of a case, was always well prepared, both in regard to the 
facts and the points of law, showing an industry and care equal 
to that of any lawyer practicing at the bar. 

In February, 1882, Mr. Conkling, unexpectedly 
to himself, was nominated by the President as 
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States. The following correspondence 
upon this subject took place between him and 
Mr. Arthur : 

Washington, Feb. 21, 1882. 
My dear Mr. Conkling: 

It is my wish to send your name to the Senate for the va- 
cant judgeship in the Supreme Court. If you will consent to this 
it will give me more satisfaction than I can tell you. 

Pray do not let the fact that you have recommended the 
nomination of your friend Mr. S. affect your decision in any 
way, for it is not my intention to make that nomination, although 
I have for him great regard and admiration. I will say this to 
him at any time, that he may know that your acceptance did not 
in any way interfere with him. I had hoped to have opportunity 



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DECLINES TO BE ASSOCIATE JUSTICE. 677 

to talk this matter over with you fully, but I could not get to 
New York this week as I intended. I wish you would come over 
and make me a visit. Can you not do so now, for a few days at 
least ? It would give me great pleasure. 

I would like to make this nomination next week, Monday if 
possible. Faithfully yours, 

Chester A. Arthur. 
The Honorable Roscoe Conkling. 

A second letter was received from the Presi- 
dent, which is given in facsimile. 

Mr. ConkHng was confirmed by the Senate, and 
he then decUned in the following letter : 

No. 29 Nassau Street, 1 
New York, March 3, 1882. \ 

Mr. President: Absence prevented prompt acknowledgment 
of your two esteemed letters which were found here awaiting my 
return from Utica. 

The high and unexpected honor you proffer by selecting me 
as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 
is greatly valued. It will ever be matter of pride and satisfac- 
tion that you and the Senate deemed me fit for so grave and ex- 
alted a trust. But for reasons which you would not fail to appre- 
ciate I am constrained to decline. 

Although urgent demands on my time just now prevent my 
accepting your cordial invitation to pass a few days with you in 
Washington, let me hold this as a pleasure deferred and not lost. 

I have the honor to be, sincerely, your obedient servant, 

Roscoe Conkling. 
To the President. 

In the spring of 1882 Mr. Conkling had so far 
recovered his strength as to be able to give atten- 
tion to all the legal business entrusted to him. The 
first case of considerable importance in which he 



678 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

appeared in court after coming to New York was 
that of the " freight-handlers' strike " on the New 
York Central and Hudson River, and on the New 
York, Lake Erie and Western railroads, which oc- 
curred in June, 1882. Upon the petition of the 
Attorney-General, supported by the affidavits of 
certain shippers of merchandise, orders were 
granted by the Supreme Court in New York, 
requiring the railroad companies to show cause 
why a peremptory writ of mandamus should not 
issue, requiring them forthwith to resume the dis- 
charge of their duties as common carriers by 
receiving and transporting all freight offered or 
already received for transportation. Mr. Conkling 
supervised the preparation of the case for the de- 
fendants, with Mr. Loomis, general counsel of the 
Company, on the part of the New York Central 
and Hudson River Railroad, and ex-Judge W. D. 
Shipman for the Erie. 

Mr. Conkling made an able and interesting 
argument, and was applauded by a crowded court- 
room — many then hearing him for the first time 
in court. The application came up for hearing 
before Judge Haight, of Buffalo. After delibera- 
tion the Court denied the application. 

At about that time a representative of the 
Apollinaris Company, of London, came to New 
York on business for the extensive importation of 



THE HOY T WILL CASE. 679 

mineral waters. He sought Mr. Conkling's advice, 
and after several consultations the latter was en- 
gaged to take the entire charge of all their legal 
business in this country. He continued to act as 
their counsel throughout, and realized a handsome 
income from this source alone. 

He had been retained as one of the counsel for 
the " Glucose " suits soon after coming to New 
York. He worked upon these considerably, but 
did not argue them. The cases were still pending 
at the time of his death. 

He was also retained in the famous Jesse Hoyt 
Will case on behalf of the contestant. Miss Mary 
Irene Hoyt, only daughter of the deceased, who 
by the will was to enjoy the use only of one mill- 
ion dollars out of an estate estimated to be up- 
ward of ten million. He continued in the case 
for some time, but finally withdrew from it. 

Mr. Gould had employed him the winter pre- 
vious, and frequently asked his advice in business 
matters, Mr. Collis P. Huntington, connected 
largely with various railroad enterprises, always 
had business for Mr. Conkling. They were warm 
friends. 

At the October (1882) term of the United States 
Supreme Court, in the case of the Cook County 
National Bank vs. United States, Mr. Conkling es- 
tablished for his client the principle that the United 



68o LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

States have, under section 3466 of the Revised 
Statutes of the United States, no priority in pay- 
ment of a demand against an insolvent bank. He 
succeeded in reversing the decree of the court be- 
low. He was also retained in the great oleomar- 
garine case, which he afterward argued at Kansas 
City, Mo., where he created far greater excite- 
ment than the case itself did. It was virtually a 
hoUday, and all business was practically suspended 
there. People had come from places twenty miles 
distant to see Roscoe Conkling. They looked at 
him and followed him and watched him at his din- 
ner. Boys climbed into the trees and men upon 
the fences to look and hear through the windows of 
the court-house. It was as good as a play to hear 
Mr. Conkling describe such occurrences and laugh 
about them afterward. 

It will be seen that at the end of this, his first 
year, Mr. Conkling was not without very substan- 
tial reasons for encouragement, without mention- 
ing the famous California railroad tax cases, so 
called, the leading one of which he had been em- 
ployed to argue at the instance of Mr. C. P. Hun- 
tington. This case, the county of San Mateo z^i-.The 
Southern Pacific Railway Company, argued De- 
cember 19, 1882, was probably the most important 
case he ever argued in the United States Supreme 
Court. It involved grave constitutional questions. 



CALIFORNIA RAILROAD TAX CASE. 68 I 

When the later cases (Santa Clara County, and 
others) were reached, some time thereafter, S. W. 
Sanderson, George F. Edmunds and William M. 
Evarts appeared for the defendants. Before the 
arguments proceeded the Chief-Justice said: "The 
Court does not wish to hear argument on the 
question whether the provisions of the fourteenth 
amendment to the Constitution (which forbids a 
State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction 
the equal protection of the laws) can be applied to 
the protection of corporations in the matter of 
taxation ; we are all of the opinion that it does." 

This statement by the Chief-Justice was a final 
decision of one of the questions argued by Mr. 
Conkling. 

In the summer of 1883 Mr. and Mrs. Conkling 
and a few chosen friends took a flying trip into 
the Yellowstone region, then for the first time 
accessible to the public through the completion of 
the Northern Pacific Railroad — a branch line run- 
ning near to the National Park. Mr. Villard, the 
president of the company, placed his private car 
at Mr. Conkling's disposal, and amid such luxu- 
rious surroundings it would, indeed, have been 
strange had not the trip proved, as it did in every 
way, a most delightful one. 

In describing the journey, one of the party writes 
as follows : 



682 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

His good-humor and gracious kindliness to all were conspic- 
uous features of the trip, and the most persistent of reporters 
or roughest of cowboys shared alike his cheerful bonhomtnie and 
politeness. 

He seemed to be an object of great curiosity and admiration 
at the outposts of civilization, and at every dreary little station on 
the Minnesota or Dakota plains a crowd was awaiting the arrival 
of the train, all eager to see and hear from Senator Conkling. I 
can see him now, that towering, majestic form, facile princeps in 
any throng, upon whom even the soil and dust of travel seemed 
to leave no stain, standing in his splendid glowing manhood amid 
that strange assemblage gathered from many a clime and nation 
of either hemisphere. "We've come a long way to see you, 
Senator," said one enthusiastic cowboy; ''we'd rather see you 
than Barnum's circus, any day." 

Arrived at the terminus, as far as then completed, of the 
branch road along the Yellowstone River, the party was landed 
late at night at the foot of a range of mountains which had to be 
scaled before food or shelter were obtainable. It was a cheerless 
and forlorn outlook that confronted us — the ascent of one of the 
spurs of the " Rockies " in a lumbering stage-coach, drawn by 
horses quite unused to the narrow, dangerous road, whose driver 
had been over it but once before, and who darkly hinted at 
probable "road agents" lurking at every turn to demand our 
money or our lives. It was then that Mr. Conkling's nerve, pluck 
and indomitable courage asserted themselves and conquered the 
dilemma. "I will drive," said he ; and, seated on the box, he did 
drive that tired, anxious party safely through the intense dark- 
ness, along the verge of awful precipices, past mountain torrents 
whose weird rushings fell on frightened ears as we lurched and 
rumbled on through the sage-brush, feeling that at any moment 
we might be precipitated hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet 
into some yawning, impenetrable chasm. Once the harness broke, 
and we were obliged to stop at a small hut on the mountain-side 
for help. The ladies were so fatigued that they begged to alight 
and seek shelter there, but this was deemed imprudent, as truly 
it was. Presently we saw several suspicious looking desperadoes 
emerge from the cabin, who insisted on accompanying us for some 



A TRIP TO THE YELLOWSTONE PARK. 683 

distance, booted, spurred and heavily armed, their lanterns flashing 
in and out of our eyes as they passed and repassed the coach with 
some familiar word or jest. We dared treat them only with the 
utmost politeness, and finally when, to our infinite relief, they 
rode off into the darkness, we felt we had had almost as narrow 
an escape from them as from the natural terrors of the way. Not 
far from dawn the light of a little road-side cabin gleamed upon 
our path, and rest and security were ours at last. 

Arriving, as we did next day, at the Mammoth Springs Hotel, 
we found it still in a most unfinished state — an enormous shingle 
palace in process of construction. The first name upon its regis- 
ter was " Roscoe Conkling," and he and his party enjoyed the 
rather questionable felicity of opening the hotel to the public. 

It was a little uncanny, to be sure, to be consigned to a room 
thirty feet square — the future drawing-room — in which the two 
or three necessary articles of furniture were disposed at magnifi- 
cent distances, and where the one small candle burned blue in the 
mist arising from damp plaster and mountain vapors. It was not 
with a sense of extreme luxury that we performed our ablutions 
with towels stiff from the packing-cases, or lay down to rest be- 
tween unhemmed sheets just torn from the piece, and beneath 
counterpanes on which the trade-mark, an enormous black eagle, 
spread his wings and seemed to suggest freedom from the tram- 
mels, perhaps, of an effete civilization. It was, however, a novel 
and entertaining experience which in the retrospect none of us 
would willingly forego. 

Several days were spent in exploring the " Wonderland of 
America," a region so familiar of late to the public through 
photography and descriptive narrative that a detailed account of 
the experience is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that the charms 
of the magnificent scenery were continually enhanced by Mr. 
Conkling's genial personality and wealth of appreciative criticism, 
by his large store of anecdote and his poetical and historical 
treasures. Retracing our way by daylight a few days later, we 
saw how numerous and narrow had been our escapes, and viewed 
with horror the wheel-tracks passing within a few inches of 
measureless abyss or madly roaring stream. Truly that clear 
and brilliant intellect was more than adequate for life's sternest 



684 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

emergencies, grandly competent to direct the wayfarer or the 
nation in peril or perplexity. 

The return trip was rapidly and pleasantly made, some of the 
cities of the great West and a glimpse of Niagara having been 
taken in en route, and soon our four thousand miles of travel 
were a thing of the past, the Senator was hard at work again 
ip the great city, and the rest of us were rehearsing in our 
respective homes the incidents of the delightful journey, its 
thrilling adventures and hair-breadth escapes, and telling of the 
boundless kindliness, humor and address of him who was the 
originator and promoter of all our enjoyment. 

While in the Yellowstone Park, Mr. Conkling 
received the following characteristic letter : 

Columbus, O., Sept. 13, 1883. 
My dear Conkling: 

When I read in the newspapers, those indisputable vehicles 
of truth, that you, being in the Yellowstone Park and needing a hot 
bath, jumped into a boiling geyser and thereby lost your skin, I 
could not help fearing that you were in the condition that Proctor 
Knott's Jewish mother thought her son to be in when, having 
caught him eating a ''hog sausage,'^ she told the rabbi that 
" Isaac must surely be outside of his mind" And now comes your 
letter to-day to confirm my worst apprehensions. I never pre- 
tended to show you the Southern Cross. I never have seen it 
myself — have never been where I could see it. And had I been, 
and you at my side, I would not have shown it to jou, for your 
morbid dislike to everything Southern would have made you 
blasphemously declare that it is an emblem of the Devil instead 
of being an emblem of Christ. And, then, it seems that you and 

B held a symposium and mourned over the Democratic 

ignorance. By Jove! this is good. At the Hot Springs in Va., 
N. Lat. 38, in the month of September, I showed you the Con- 
stellation Cygnus — the Swan — commonly called the " dVorthern 
Cross." To do so, I set you face to face with the Polar Star. 
Did you think, when facing the North Star, that you were looking 
south ? Or did you suppose that the Southern Cross was north 



MR. THURMAN'S LETTER. 685 

of the Equator ? If not, how could you suppose that I was show- 
ing you the Southern Cross? And, then, brother B 's mind 

has been torn up at the revelation of my ignorance; but is it not 
strange that he did not immediately correct my error when you 
told him that I had shown you the Southern Cross in the neigh- 
borhood of the North Pole ? What caused brother B to 

take time to consider and consult a geography of the heavens 
and then write you a learned letter to warn you against trusting 
to Democratic ignorance ? What remarkable Republican learning 

you and B have displayed! You looked at the North Star 

and thought you saw the Southern Cross some degrees above it. 
He took time to find out whether you were right or wrong, and, 
after consulting the authorities and possibly the Professor of 
Astronomy at Harvard, came to the conclusion that you had 
been deluded by the teachings of an ignorant Democrat. Conk- 
ling if Newton had been a Democrat, would you believe in the 
law of gravitation ? Had Herschel been a Democrat, would not 
you and B have stoutly affirmed that the nebulae he dis- 
covered were mere patches of fog ? Think of these things, my 
friend, and conclude that not even a Democrat would attempt to 
show the Southern Cross from the Hot Springs, Va. I rather 

think that I ought to send a copy of this letter to B . He 

was in sufficient distress before, under B's -reign in Massachu- 
setts, without your aggravating his sorrows by your picture of 
Democratic ignorance. Ought I not to give peace to his soul ? 

Yours very sincerely, 

A. G. Thurman. 

In this connection the biographer received from 
Mr. Thurman the letter which is here inserted in 

fac-simile. 

Once more in New York, Mr. Conkhng engaged 
in his professional work with renewed energy. 

One of the law cases which best tested the ex- 
Senator's original power, was the famous case of 



686 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

Marie and others 27j-. Garrison,* pending in the Su- 
perior Court of the city of New York, and submit- 
ted for trial to a referee (Theodore W. Dwight). 
The claim of the plaintiffs was for damages to 
the amount of some five million dollars, and the 
questions of law involved were numerous, novel 
and intricate. They grew out of the foreclosure 
of a mortgage on one of the great Western rail- 
roads, which Mr. Conkling was fond of calling 
" the New York Central of the West." It was the 
present Missouri Pacific Railroad. The plaintiffs 
had been stockholders in the company. 

Mr. Garrison had, as they asserted, promised to 
bid for them at the sale, which included both 
real and personal property. Garrison purchased 
the property for himself, and repudiated all ob- 
ligation to hold it for the benefit of the purchas- 
ing committee of stockholders, and alleged that 
if he made any promise it was not binding on 
him by reason of failure to comply with the rule 
of the statute of frauds, requiring the contract to 
be in writing. There were writings, but they were 
asserted not to be sufficient. Out of this general 
state of facts arose a great variety of questions, 
such as the right of stockholders to redeem from 
the mortgage as distinguished from that of the 

* Concerning the construction of the statute of frauds, the case of 
Marie et al. vs. Garrison must be considered the leading case in American 
jurisprudence. 




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MARIE AGAINST GARRISON. 687 

company, as well as the right of stockholders' as- 
signees buying by way of speculation, upon the 
results of the action. The statute of frauds in 
Missouri and that of New York differed in mate- 
rial respects, and it became necessary to construe 
each and to determine which was applicable. Trust 
questions presented themselves which were not at 
the time fully decided. Questions of evidence 
required elaborate discussion. 

All of these points were treated by Mr. Conk- 
ling, who was the leading counsel for the plaintiffs, 
with the hand of a master. He was opposed by 
George F. Comstock, one of the ablest counsel of 
the State, who, on this occasion at least, met his 
equal. Mr. Conkling, who had not long been out 
of the Senate, attracted much public attention dur- 
ing the trial. At times he was witty and discur- 
sive ; at other times, sharp, and incisive ; always 
good-humored, and with all his resources at com- 
mand. 

This trial was a thorough and decisive test of 
Mr. Conkling's powers, for though he had the as- 
sistance of able junior counsel in the preparation 
of the case, he stood for the most part alone in 
the active work of the trial, in opposition not only 
to Judge Comstock, but to other leaders of the 
bar, including in the later stages of the case Jo- 
seph H. Choate. 



688 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

This case was begun in April, 1878, in the Supe- 
rior Court of the city of New York. The defend- 
ant served a demurrer, which, at special term, was 
overruled. An appeal was then taken to the gen- 
eral term, which reversed the decision of the judge 
below. Finally the case was carried to the Court 
of Appeals, which reversed the decision of the 
general term and affirmed the judgment entered 
at the special term of the Superior Court, The 
answer was served and issue joined in February, 
1881. 

In the spring of 1882 Mr. Conkling was retained 
as senior counsel for the plaintiffs. The case was 
sent to the Hon. Theodore W. Dwight as referee, 
and the arguments began June 18, 1883. Mason 
W. Tyler opened for the plaintiffs. He was fol- 
lowed by Roscoe Conkling, who made an oral 
argument September 17, 18 and 19, which fills 190 
printed pages. Two brief extracts from it are 
given in the chapter on " Oratory " (page 422). 

Mr. Conkling's argument was upon the motion 
of the defendant to exclude evidence of the con- 
tracts alleged to have been made with the plain- 
tiffs by Mr. Garrison, and at issue in this case, on 
the ground that they are contrary to the statute 
of frauds of New York, and if not so, against the 
provisions of the statute of Missouri. 

On September 25 and 26 Henry L, Clinton 



A MOTION TO DISMISS DENIED. 689 

made a long argument in reply. On November 
9 the referee delivered an opinion covering one 
hundred printed pages. It is an exhaustive dis- 
cussion of the statute of frauds in both States. 
Many cases in the English and American law re- 
ports are cited, and the referee thus concludes : 
" On the whole, the motion to exclude the evi- 
dence is denied." This long opinion may be re- 
garded as the standard authority upon the con- 
struction of the statute of frauds in the above- 
named States. It is reported in full, with copious 
foot-notes, in Abbott's New Cases, vol. 13, pp. 
210-328. 

When Mr. Conkling and his associates rested 
their case, the counsel for the defendant moved 
to dismiss the complaint. On February 14, 1884, 
Melville C. Day opened the argument. The ref- 
eree then filed an opinion, which fills fifty printed 
pages, denying the motion to dismiss. Then the 
necessary testimony was taken. 

This case was one of intense public interest. It 
was said that well-known Wall Street gamblers 
were at the bottom of it. The sessions before the 
referee were always attended by newspaper re- 
porters. 

In May the defendant applied to a judge of the 
Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition to pre- 
vent the referee from going further with the case. 
44 



690 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The judge held the papers near six months and 
then denied the appHcation. A motion to remove 
the referee was afterward made and denied. 
Thereupon the defendant (together with other 
parties who were interested), having been beaten 
at every turn, settled this long suit in the spring 
of 1885 by the payment of one million dollars. 
Mr. Conkling's fee amounted to fifty thousand 
dollars. 

A striking illustration of Mr. Conkling's energy, 
ability and readiness in encountering any unex- 
pected difficulty is shown in the following state- 
ment made by the junior counsel in this suit, Mr. 
Tyler. 

* * * We had not expected that that question of the statute 
of frauds would be precipitated at that stage, and had not made 
any particular preparations to meet it. * * * Upon the part of 
the plaintiffs it was understood that Mr. Beach would prepare 
himself thoroughly for this argument, and that Mr. Conkling need 
not burden himself with it. The case was adjourned in the latter 
part of June to the middle of September, on the understanding 
that the argument upon the statute of frauds should proceed at 
that time. When we met in September, Mr. Day and Judge 
Comstock each made long and labored arguments, lasting several 
days, upon the statute of frauds; and it then transpired that Mr. 
Beach, owing to the condition of his health, had not made any 
preparation during the summer ; and after the argument had pro- 
ceeded for two or three days on the part of the defendants, he an- 
nounced to Mr. Conkling that he was unable to make that argu- 
ment, and that he (Mr. Conkling) must reply to Mr. Day and 
Judge Comstock. This was a matter of surprise to Mr. Conkling, 
but he went to work with a will, and with such assistance as I 



A SHARP LETTER. 69 1 

could render him, to prepare himself for that argument. Mr, 
Day had a printed brief of something like one hundred pages, 
and Judge Comstock had prepared a printed brief of thirty or 
forty pages, as I remember it ; and I think in about four days' 
time Mr. Conkling prepared his reply, listening to their arguments 
during the middle of the day each day, and working afternoons 
and evenings in preparing himself to answer them. He was occu- 
pied three days with the delivery of his argument, speaking from 
three to four hours each day; and all who heard it thought it was 
a most brilliant effort on his part. * * * 

Judge Donohue, by an alternative writ of pro- 
hibition, had delayed the case for five months, and 
Messrs. Conkling and Tyler wondered why the 
Judge did not decide it. Accordingly, with a view 
to expedite matters, they addressed the following 
letter to him. It had the desired effect, for the 
learned justice gave his decision three days after- 
ward ! 

New York, October 22, 1884. 
Hon. Charles Donohue, Justice of the Supreme Court. 

Five months ago yesterday, by your order, in form of alter- 
native writ of prohibition, this case pending in the Superior Court 
was arrested and the plaintiffs tied fast. 

As preliminary objection, it was at once suggested to you 
that as the Superior Court confessedly had jurisdiction of the 
case, a writ of prohibition based upon alleged errors in rulings 
on the trial was legally impossible. 

This preliminary objection has been under your consideration 
during all this time, and still there is no decision. 

Great hardship and injury have resulted, which, we cannot 
suppose, being brought* to your notice, will enable you to recon- 
cile it with your sense of justice longer to defer a decision. 

The suit is for several millions, which have been due since 
1876. 



692 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

Under cover of your order staying the case, and of the delay 
already referred to, the defendant has made a general assign- 
ment of all his property for the benefit of creditors; and day by 
day the plaintiffs are being damaged in their rights, and their 
remedy endangered. 

Saying nothing of still other harm which has come from such 
unexpected procrastination, we feel authorized, and indeed bound, 
to respectfully bring the matter to your notice, and to submit 
that fair regard to the administration of justice requires an im- 
mediate disposition of the question so long pending before you. 
Very respectfully, 

Your obt. servants, 

RoSCOE CONKLING, ) ^ 

,, -1,7 ^ ( of cou?iseL 

Mason W. Tyler, ) "^ 

Whether Mr, Conkling could have been induced 
to re-enter pubHc Hfe, if he had Uved, is a matter 
of controversy. His personal declarations upon 
the subject were generally of the nature of a de- 
nial. The following letter, written in the Presi- 
dential campaign of 1884, is explicit, and evidently 
unequivocal : 

New York, July 12, 1884. 

My Dear Sir: A week's absence will excuse my delay in 
thanking you for your letter. 

You are aware, perhaps, that the professional relations I have 
assumed not only tax my time pretty fully, but have imposed ob- 
ligations which would stand in the way of participating in the 
canvass, even if inclination prompted my doing so. 

Indeed, it is not likely that I shall ever take part in politics 
again, unless in answer to some call of duty, or some occasion 
such as is altogether improbable. With kind regards. 

Cordially yours, 

RoSCOE CONKLING. 



PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1884. 693 

He was accused of having- worked secretly iox 
the election of Mr. Cleveland. According to his 
usual practice, he made no reply to these asper- 
sions. He, nevertheless, was not unwilling to 
disabuse, promptly, his personal friends. He 
wrote a letter upon the subject to Mr. Fanton in 
January, 1885 ; but when that gentleman asked 
permission to make it public as a reply to his ad- 
versaries, he positively refused. The letter, how- 
ever, was printed in 1889 (after his death), and 
reads as follows : 

2 Wall Street, January 7, 1885. 
My Dear Sir : — You have my thanks for your kind and 
pleasant article. An impression, plainly implied, shows that you 
have fallen into an error of fact, which it seems worth while to 
correct. I had absolutely nothing to do with the late Presiden- 
tial controversy from first to last. Indeed, since 1881 I have 
had nothing to do with any political movement whatever. It 
was long insisted by a number of persons that my prominence in 
politics was injurious to the Republican party. The time came 
when this belief was acted on and I was relegated to private life. 
My action since has been only a quiet acceptance of the event 
and the fact. Thus you will see it is plainly erroneous to ascribe 
to me retaliation, or responsibility for results, unless such respon- 
sibility is found in my not contesting the will of the party and 
not attempting to regain the place or position which was taken 
away with much violence of condemnation. Wishing you a happy 
New Year, Cordially yours, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

The following incident of Mr. Conkling's legal 
life shows his courtesy to his fellow members of 
the bar. 



694 ^Z^-^" AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

In the winter of 1885 John F. Mclntyre, a rising lawyer 
in the city of New York, was arguing in the Supreme Court a 
motion growing out of a suit upon an administration bond. The 
subject of this memoir dropped into the court-room and listened 
attentively to Mr. Mclntyre's argument. After he had finished, 
Mr. Conkling stepped up and complimented him upon his pres- 
entation of the law affecting the case. Mr. Conkling then submit- 
ted to his new acquaintance several questions which he said he 
would soon argue before the court in the Erie Railway litiga- 
tion, and he thought that some of the authorities cited by Mr. 
Mclntyre went toward maintaining the position he would claim 
in his case. He also desired Mr. Mclntyre to state his opinion, 
after telling him the facts, and asked him for his brief. Feeling 
highly flattered, Mr. Mclntyre willingly handed him a copy of his 
brief, and also expressed his opinion regarding its relevancy to 
the cases cited by him to the proposition presented by Mr. Conk- 
ling. Shortly afterward Mr. Conkling requested his new ac- 
quaintance to call at his office, as he wished him to look at a 
point he was about to present in his own case, and to see if in 
his judgment the cases cited by him (Mr. Mclntyre) bore out 
his theory. Mr. Mclntyre visited Mr. Conkling at No. 2 Wall 
Street and spent two hours with him. Soon afterward he received 
from Mr. Conkling a check for $150, with a note stating that in- 
asmuch as he had been kind enough to give him the information 
he sought, and that he had deemed it valuable to him, he must 
insist upon giving a counsel fee. All this was a surprise to Mr. 
Mclntyre, for he thought that the check represented an amount 
far in excess of the value of his services. He never expected 
any compensation, but simply regarded the entire transaction as 
one of professional courtesy between lawyers. 

In December, 1885, Mr. Conkling" defended the 
publisher of the New York World in an interest- 
ing libel suit. Action had been brought by a 
milkman in Brooklyn for the publication in the 
World of the report of the Health Department as 



TPVO LIBEL SUITS. 695 

to the condition of his stable. In commenting 
upon it that journal charged the plaintiff with sell- 
ing impure milk. 

The trial lasted three days and attracted much 
attention. Mr. Conkling was successful, for the 
suit was discontinued by the consent of both 
parties, and on motion of the plaintiff's attorney 
an order of dismissal was entered. In the follow- 
ing year the World was sued by William R. Grace 
for libel. Mr. Conkling appeared for the defend- 
ant, and in due time his answer was published, 
occupying six columns of that journal. The case 
has not yet been tried. 

Indeed, during his residence in the city of New 
York, the subject of this memoir appeared in so 
many important cases that a full description of 
them would fill this volume. Two more causes 
only will be mentioned — the franchise of the 
Broadway Railroad Company ; and Farnsworth, 
Receiver of the Bankers' and Merchants' Tele- 
graph Company vs. The Western Union Telegraph 
Company. 

The Special Committee of the New York Sen- 
ate to investigate the corrupt method of granting 
a franchise to the Broadway Railroad Company 
met in the city of New York February 6, 1886, 
and sat until April 10. 

The following Senators composed the Commit- 



696 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONA'LING. 

tee : Henry R. Low (chairman), Edward C.Walker, 
Jacob W. Hoysradt, Charles L. Knapp, Henry C. 
Nelson, James F. Pierce, Edward F. Reilly. 

Roscoe Conkling and Clarence A. Seward acted 
as counsel to the Committee, and George Bliss, L. 
E. Chittenden and Richard S. Newcombe appeared 
for various witnesses. 

The testimony filled 1,640 printed pages. 

Then the counsel made elaborate arguments be- 
fore the Committee at Albany. Messrs. Seward 
and Conkling were victorious, and the charter of 
the railroad company was repealed. 

Another very important case which came to 
Mr. Conkling was the suit of Farnsworth, Receiver 
of the Bankers' and Merchants' Telegraph Com- 
pany against the Western Union, which was tried 
in the New York Supreme Court before Judge 
Lawrence. Robert G. Ingersoll and Mr. Conkling 
appeared for the plaintiff ; and Joseph H. Choate, 
ex-Judge Dillon and Aaron J. Vanderpoel for the 
defendants. The trial lasted six weeks during June 
and July, 1886. Mr. Conkling was allowed three 
hours to sum up, and finished three minutes under 
his time. He recovered a verdict of $240,000. 
Excepting the case of Marie against Garrison, 
this was the largest sum that Mr. Conkling ever 
recovered. A lawver who attended this trial said 
to the author, " Mr. Conkling surprised us all by 



CHIEF-JUSTICE WAITE'S KEMARK. 697 

coming to New York when upward of fifty years 
old, and, in face of so much competition, acquir- 
ing- such a large and lucrative practice." 

As the result of six years of constant toil he 
not only paid every obligation, but amassed, for 
a lawyer, a large fortune. From time to time he 
argued causes in the States of Missouri, Illinois, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey, but 
toward the close of his life he refused many re- 
tainers in those States, and confined his practice 
chiefly to the courts of New York and of Wash- 
ington.^ 

The late Chief-Justice Waite said to a friend of 
Mr. Conkling that upon coming to Washington 
he was prejudiced against the latter, and that the 
prejudice was increasing. He had thought that 
Mr. Conkling was a politician, rather than a lawyer. 
In the first case which Mr. Conkling argued before 
the Supreme Court after Judge Waite's accession, 
he sought to have a decision of the lower court 
reversed. It was a very knotty question, but Mr. 
Conkling won his case. After that the Chief- 
Justice said, " No man ever came into our court 
who was listened to with more undivided atten- 
tion than Roscoe Conkling." 

* It is worthy of remark that, immediately after Mr. Conlcling's death, 
two of his clients wrote to Utica inquiring about the pecuniary condition 
of his family, and offering to provide for them. The generous proposal 
was declined with thanks. 



698 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LI KG. 

As to comparing Mr. Conkling with his legal 
contemporaries, the opinions of the following emi- 
nent jurists may be quoted (see pp. 63, 64): 

Ex-Judge Hooper C. Van Vorst of the New 
York Supreme Court says : 

His services were deservedly in demand in the important cases 
which engaged the attention of the courts. His arguments and 
appeals always commanded the attention of the tribunal before 
which he appeared. 

In these contentions he always had arrayed against him the 
foremost lawyers and skilled advocates. That fact is of itself 
suggestive of his standing among his professional brethren, and 
of his reputation in the State. 

The Hon. Rufus W. Peckham of the Court of 

Appeals states : 

As an advocate he took rank among the very first in the 
whole country. His high personal character, his distinguished 
abilities, and the great part he played in the legislative depart- 
ment of the country at a time when such department was engaged 
in the conduct of the most important matters that have come 
before it during its existence almost, all entitle him to a fore- 
most place in the eyes of his countrymen. 

The Hon. Nathaniel Shipman of the United 
States District Court for Connecticut writes : 

I thought him a great and profound lawyer, and that he would 
have been in the front rank of his profession at any time or 
place. He did not have the accurate learning of Judge B. R. 
Curtis, or the great wealth of legal knowledge of Mr. O'Conor, 
but I was exceedingly surprised to see how much he had retained 
after his long Congressional career. His affluence of language 
and of illustration was great ; but he had a wonderful power 
of statement, and he was an inventor in the art of decorating his 
statement so as to make it attractive. 



OPINIONS OF EMINENT JURISTS. 699 

The Hon. George F. Comstock, formerly of the 
New York Court of Appeals, writes : 

In the lines of eloquence at the bar to which his genius was 
best adapted, I think he has had no superior in my day. 

Senator William M. Stewart (of Nevada) re- 
marks : 

Mr. Conkling, in my opinion, had no superior at the Ameri- 
can bar in the trial of causes where the amount or principle in- 
volved was sufficient to interest him. He had no equal as an 
accomplished and effective debater in the United States, either 
at the bar or in the halls of Congress. 

His legal career in New York was unique. We 
have seen that as soon as his bodily strength 
enabled him, he took his place at the bar and 
wrestled successfully with its ablest counsel- 
ors. He was in fair way to win emolument as 
well as distinction. The annual receipts of his 
practice in the metropolis exceeded $50,000, and 
were steadily increasing, when death ended his 
earthly career. What might have been, if he had 
Hved longer, can hardly be conjectured. He was 
distinguished, his powers were widely known, and 
wherever he appeared he was felt to be the chief. 
He might have won greater distinction as a law- 
yer ; but there was no higher place for him m 
public life. He had made himself too great for 
official eminence to exalt him further. Age would 
have chastened many of his characteristics into 



700 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONKLING. 

greater suavity and gentleness. He would always 
have been much admired and beloved. Stricken 
down in the very midst of activity, the telegraph 
had no sooner flashed the sad news over the con- 
tinent than the response was universal : " A prince 
and a great man is fallen this day in Israel." 



<* 



March- April, il 
CHAPTER XXXVI. 

CONCLUSION. 

'T^HE great blizzard of March 12, 1888, will long 
be remembered. Men in the metropolis were 
unable to reach or return from their places of 
business, or even to communicate with them ; the 
mail service was interrupted, and wayfarers abroad 
were unable to get to their homes. Those who 
succeeded did so only after a terrific encounter 
with the storm, and through streets almost impass- 
able by the drifting snow. 

Among other way-bound pedestrians on that 
eventful twelfth of March was Roscoe Conkling. 
He had succeeded in reaching his office in the 
morning, but when the time came to return to his 
lodgings the condition of the streets as well as 
the weather forbade the attempt. How he reached 
his destination is best described by himself : 

There wasn't a cab or carriage of any kind to be had. Once 
during the day I had declined an offer to ride up-town in a car- 
riage because the man wanted $50, and I started up Broadway 
on my pins. It was dark, and it was useless to try to pick out a 
path, so I went magnificently along, shouldering through drifts, 
and headed for the north. I was pretty well exhausted when I 

701 



702 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

got to Union Square, and wiping the snow from my eyes, tried 
to make out the triangles there. But it was impossible. There 
was no light, and I plunged right through, on as straight a line 
as I could determine upon. Sometimes I have run across pas- 
sages in novels of great adventures in snow-storms; for example, 
in stories of Russian life, where there would be a vivid descrip- 
tion of a man's struggle on a snow-swept and windy plain ; but I 
have always considered the presentation an exaggeration. I shall 
never say so again, for after what I encountered in last night's 
blizzard I can believe that the strongest description would fail to 
approximate the truth. I had got to the middle of the park and 
was up to my arms in a drift. I pulled the ice and snow from 
my eyes, and held my hands up there till everything was melted 
off so that I might see ; but it was too dark and the snow too 
blinding. For nearly twenty minutes I was stuck there, and I 
came as near giving right up and sinking down there to die as a 
man can and not do it. Somehow I got out and made my way 
along. When I reached the New York Club at Twenty-fifth 
Street, I was covered all over with ice and packed snow, and 
they would scarcely believe that I had walked from Wall Street. 
It took three hours to make the journey. 

Many have supposed that the fatigue and ex- 
posure of that terrible night were the immediate 
cause of his mortal illness. He was certainly- 
much exhausted, but he continued for more than 
a fortnight to attend to business. Mr. Henry 
Melville, his associate, has given this true explana- 
tion: " It was not the bitter experience," he de- 
clares, "it was a cold contracted in a lawyer's 
office on March 29. Mr. Conkling complained of 
the chilly room, but he would not leave till the 
consultation had closed." 

He never rallied from this. He was unable to 



HIS LAST LETTER. 7O3 

work, and compelled, reluctantly however, to 
summon medical aid. His suffering was intense. 
The physicians were of opinion that there was an 
abscess in the brain, and that an operation was 
necessary to afford relief. Dr. Henry B. Sands ac- 
cordingly made an opening through the skull, but 
the benefit was only temporary. At this time he 
wrote the following letter 

Thursday, April 5, 1888. 
My dear Mr. Belmont : 

If I finish this note to you it will be the strongest sign of im- 
provement since I fell into darkness and disorder. 

The wine, yes, I shall like that very much for several reasons. 
Your visit has been a frequent and consoling recollection. Your 
afterthought of me makes such impression as could be made only 
on one who has undergone what seems a limitless agony. 

When my senses return, if they ever do, I'll come to correct 
the stumbles of this. Always your friend and servant, 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 

August Belmont, Esq. 

This was the last writing that he ever performed. 
He lingered until about two a. m. on Wednesday, 
April 18, when death came to end his sufferings.* 

Soon after the sad news was flashed by the 
electric wires all over the country, telegrams and 
messages of sympathy and condolence began to 
come in, even from far distant Texas and Nebraska. 
They came from the highest and the lowest: from 

*During his illness many messages of sympathy were sent, one of 
which was a despatch signed by thirteen Democratic United States Sen- 
ators, all but two being ex-Confederate officers. It may be added that the 
chaplain of the House of Representatives prayed for his recovery. 



704 I^I^^- -l^'^J^ LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

the White House at Washing-ton, that sent its 
tribute of flowers, to a few poor negroes that met 
obscurely in a corner, and sent their resolutions, 
laboriously constructed perhaps, but warm from 
their glowing hearts, to honor him that had al- 
ways stood by them, no matter amidst what ob- 
loquy or against how many foes. 

There were also eloquent obituary notices of the 
departed statesman in the London Obsei^ver, the 
London Standard, and other British journals. The 
London Times had published reports of his con- 
dition, daily, during the last two weeks of his life. 

The brief but forcible tribute of the Manhattan 
Club was as follows : 

The voluntary close of Roscoe Conkling's long and illustri- 
ous political career, a member of the Federal Legislature, four 
times elected to the House of Representatives and thrice to the 
Senate, left unclouded his title to our fellowship as to our pride. 
That he had waived the highest diplomatic functions; that he had 
declined the first judicial office; that he had resigned the highest 
Senatorial trust — these were marks of a character unique in force 
and style. That he was of stainless honor through an era of cor- 
ruption, of unquailing hardihood in a day of desertions and dis- 
aster; that he was sincere, manly, constant, incapable of disloy- 
alty to a party or a friend; that in seven years after his return to 
private life he had rebuilt a fortune shattered in friendly service, 
meanwhile, in the judgment of the bar of this metropolis, rising 
to its foremost rank without envy and without dispute — these are 
distinctions beyond the power of antagonists to withhold, or of 
partisans to confer. 

Manton Marble, President. 

David B. Gilbert, Secretary. 



CLOSE OF HIS CAREER. 705 

The following obituary in the New York Herald 
is a fair index to the public appreciation of the 
man : 

The death of Roscoe Conkling is not an incident but an 
event. Truly the Fates are stern and grudge the Republic her 
noblest sons. Grant, Garfield, Tilden, O'Conor, Logan, Man- 
ning, Washburne, Phillips, Emerson, Beecher, Waite — so many we 
deeply grieve to spare — and how many more, dear to us for their 
wisdom and valor, their piety, wit and learning — men with so 
much to do, as it seemed to our mere human eyes. But their 
work was done. For them no more was appointed. We turn 
from their new-made graves to mourn another in Mr. Conkling, 
to be remembered with the most eminent of them all. 

As a political influence rather than as a political leader, Mr. 
Conkling will be honored. He was not born to lead a modern 
democracy. He was Coriolaiius rather than Rienzi — a master, 
not a tribune. The arts of modern leadership — tact, compromise, 
recognition of the limitations and weakness of devoted friendship 
— were unknown to his haughty spirit. He rather led the leaders 
of men — the centurions, the captains of the fifties — who were 
attracted by the force of his character and followed him from 
admiration of his picturesque and splendid genius. 

The intense honesty of Mr. Conkling became often intoler- 
ance. There was no bending that intrepid will. His devotion to 
a principle or a friendship was that of Loyola and not of Talley- 
rand. His controversies made history. Nor will history say 
that in these controversies Mr. Conkling was right and his oppo- 
nents wrong. They were eminent, patriotic men; pure in mo- 
tive, and quite as apt to be sincere as himself. But there was 
no compromise in the nature of Roscoe Conkling. His friends 
were his friends, his enemies were his enemies. Aiming ever at 
the highest ideal of chivalry, whatever failed to reach that ideal 
was unworthy of his esteem. 

Mr. Conkling did not die too soon for his fame, but too soon 

for recognition. Americans had grown to be intensely proud of 

this superb, high-principled, supremely-gifted statesman; to look 

upon him as a model leader, eminent in experience, probity, 

45 



706 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

eloquence. His very faults were looked at as an extreme expres- 
sion of virtues so little seen among public men. In a time of 
surrender, incapacity, mendacity, mud, compromise and shame 
the Republican party was turning toward the one man who was 
too proud to bend to an ignoble suggestion. Republicans, recall- 
ing the best days of their ascendency, wearj^ of government by 
mobs of drunken adventurers, who called themselves Conven- 
tions and bought and sold nominations, were thinking of one who 
never paltered with the truth for power. Greater than his party, 
above it in aspirations and in moral tone; cast down from his old 
leadership in some mood of momentary baseness, time was 
swiftly bringing recognition and vindication. He had only to 
wait until the party returned to him — returned, bearing honors 
which he had won by his genius and lost by his integrity. 

This was not to be. He was to die — if true leaders of public 
opinion like Conkling ever die. The palpable man whom we saw 
but yesterday, with commanding mien — stern, deep-set eyes, the 
brows Olympian, the over-whitened hair, the ruddy face eternal in 
youth and expression, vigor, genius, grace — personal beauty per- 
sonified; the orator, scholar, the implacable opponent and tumult- 
uous man of affairs, has gone, but the impalpable spirit remains. 
We have lost the most aggressive leader in American politics 
since Clay and Webster died, thirty-six years ago. But he is not 
dead. His life remains an incentive, an example — let us say an 
admonition. For it may be well to remember as an admonition 
that in any public career pride, intolerance, and the Swift-like 
gift of withering invective may retard or prevent opportunities of 
lustrous service to the Commonwealth. But even so, generations 
will come and go before the example of this extraordinary man, 
his eloquence and learning, his undaunted devotion to truth, his 
purity and courage, his uncompromising patriotism, his scorn of 
cant and deception, will be forgotten. A masterful, imperial 
soul has passed away, leaving a name which Americans will not 
soon let die. 

From far-off Omaha came the following elo- 
quent appreciation of his character. It was deliv- 
ered by Mr. C. J. Greene at a meeting of citizens 



MR. GREENE'S EULOGY. yoj 

three days after Mr. Conkling's death. Having 
read the resolutions Mr. Greene said: 



The shafts of envy and of malice have all been aimed at him, 
and to-night they lie broken and harmless at his grave, under a 
drift of tender and loving messages from warm and grateful hearts 
in every part of his native land. Roscoe Conkling is at rest: at rest, 
the kingly form which a few days since towered above the masses 
in all the grace and splendor of its imperial dignity; at rest, the 
brilliant and commanding intellect which for more than a quar- 
ter of a century, in all the fierce and bitter contentions of his po- 
litical and professional career, maintained its influence and suprem- 
acy, unquestioned and unrivaled; at rest, the indomitable and 
unconquerable spirit which no obstacle could appall, no misfor- 
tune disturb, no defeat intimidate, no calamity subdue. Ended 
are his conflicts, his triumphs and defeats. Silent the magic 
voice that never sounded a retreat or uttered one complaint 
against the malignant fates that wrecked the hopes and ambitions 
of a lifetime. Into the shadows of the deep and insoluble mys- 
tery his heroic spirit has taken its final flight, leaving as a rich 
legacy the lesson so seldom taught in public life, so hard to learn 
— the irresistible force and moral grandeur of perfect honesty. 

In future years the youthful student of history will turn to 
the pages which record the brilliant exploits of our military 
heroes, and the names of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Logan 
will fill his young heart with the burning desire to emulate their 
heroic deeds upon the crimson fields of glory. He will turn to 
other pages and read how listening Senates yielded to the spell 
of matchless oratory, and the names of Adams, Clay and Web- 
ster will fill his mind with visions of eloquence and applause; and 
then, turning to another page, he will read of him whose death we 
mourn to-night; of his magnificent presence, his peerless intel- 
lect, his unrivaled speech, his marvelous command of men, his 
distinguished services to the State, and, more than all, of his 
stainless character, and whatever aspirations may animate his 
breast, the name of Roscoe Conkling will incite him to seek glory 
only in the paths of honor. 



7o8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROSCOE CONK LING. 

The Legislature of his State paid him appro- 
priate honors. It adopted resolutions in com- 
memoration of the sad event, and ordered a me- 
morial volume to be printed setting forth his 
character and public services. The two Houses 
also met in joint session and listened to a eulogy 
of the dead from the eloquent Colonel Robert G. 
Ingersoll. It was glowing in praise and exquisite 
in pathos. The orator concluded with these words : 

And as he lived, he died. Proudly he entered the darkness — 
or the dawn — that we call death. Unshrinkingly he passed be- 
yond our horizon, beyond the twilight's purple hills, beyond the 
utmost reach of human harm or help — to that vast realm of 
silence or of joy where the innumerable dwell, and he has left 
with us his wealth of thought and deed — the memory of a brave, 
imperious, honest man, who bowed alone to death. 

The body lay till the ensuing Friday morn- 
ing, and was visited by numerous friends and 
admirers. Mr. Frank B. Carpenter, the artist, 
came to pay his respects, and thus describes the 
countenance of the dead statesman : 

I never saw a more beautiful dead face. It was like sculpture; 
it was like the head of a god. The symmetry, the clean, clear 
cut of the features and the majesty that was upon the brow was 
something almost unparalleled. I can recall no such face outside 
of the classic, the antique. It seemed even finer in death than it 
was in life. 

On Saturday the remains were removed to 
Utica to receive the last sad offices. While the 



HIS FUNERAL A T UTICA. 709 

casket stood in the large hall of his late residence, 
more than five thousand inhabitants of the city 
and region came to pay their tribute of respect 
to the illustrious dead. 

The Senator's remains were followed to the 
beautiful Forest Hills Cemetery by his male rela- 
tives and the pall-bearers, who had been his life- 
long friends. 

He was laid in the conservatory encircled by 
fragrant flowers. His body now rests in the soil 
of the county of Oneida, whose citizens gave 
him the opportunity for public service, and to 
whose interests he was devoted throughout his 
long and honorable career.^ 

*Mr. Conkling, during his lifetime, greatly admired these 
lines from Childe Harold. They are remarkably expressive of 
his lofty aims in life, as well as appropriate to its closing scenes: 

My task is done— my song hath ceased— my theme 
Has died into an echo: it is fit 

The spell should break of this protracted dream. 
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit 

My midnight lamp— and what is writ, is writ- 
Would it were worthier! but I am not now 

That which I have been— and my visions flit 
Less palpably before me— and the glow 

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint and low. 

THE END. 




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calf. It rises to the dignity of an important historical work, and is as inter- 
esting as a romance. 

A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to 
the Present Time. — Compiled and edited by Edmund Clarence Stcd- 
man and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. Fifteen full-page portraits to each 



CHARLES L. WEBST ER 5f CO. 

1= Rvo Extra cloth, plain cloth, professional edition, 

America. AcoBpktelibrary i„ "-''■ _ ^„^ T,,i„. 

A Connecticut Tankae in Kmg^"-' iSu°s;"^H„„,'by Dan Beard. 

sheep, Ml seal, haU morocco. Bv Alfred R. Conkllng, 

'^n° r^"''ro°L":reo?rr?.~pi^s. «raied». 

letters. A clear and imparUal biography of the great u 
man In cloth, sheep. Ml seal, and half morocco. 

Orders sent direct to nT^il^^^^^i^ediate attenUon. Catalogue 
""ToStclrenienay situated for people shopp^g in New VorU City. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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